


Primae Noctis

by pontmercy44



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Bodice-Ripper, Class Differences, F/M, I repeat, Pining, feminism was not a thing yet, this is not historically accurate, this is really not historically accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-10-21
Packaged: 2018-12-09 14:13:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11670702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pontmercy44/pseuds/pontmercy44
Summary: In which I take liberties with history and the Baron of Alderaan takes liberties with the village orphan.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: implied threat of non-consensual sex; no actual non-consensual sex.

The old Baron of Alderaan had given his consent for Unkar Plutt, the miller, to marry the orphan Rey at midsummer, and died promptly thereafter, from a fever and his old age. There had been no reason to disapprove of the union. The orphan in question was Plutt’s ward, old enough, and without other prospects. The tax had been paid. The old baron had never been in the habit of meddling too much in the affairs of his serfs, in any case. He gave his magnanimous permission for marriages and took his taxes, but otherwise, he lacked the vigor and health to be tyrannical or overbearing.

Plutt, for all that he was just a miller, _did_ have the capacity to be tyrannical and overbearing. He cheated people out of flour and no one could complain of it. He beat his assistant – a slip of a boy whose father got a scoop of flour every day in exchange for his labor – badly. It was accepted that he’d likely beat his new wife, too.

Still, his ward was lucky in a practical sense. Plutt was wealthy, for someone of his social stratification. He’d accumulated his wealth over forty-three years – he was more than twice the age of his new bride. She would never starve or shiver. There would always be a sturdy thatched roof over her head and bread in her belly. That, and her new husband could offer her status.

It was only by virtue of her beauty that Rey the orphan could be a miller’s wife. She was probably some knight errant’s bastard, but her mother was dead and it was less offensive to call her an orphan. Plutt had kept her fed – barely – for fifteen years. Her mother had died in the night, and she would have otherwise starved. At first, his philanthropy had been motivated by economics. Rey was a scrawny, tough thing, and she labored, either in the baron’s household to fulfill his feudal obligations or in the mill, for nothing more than scraps and a dry place to sleep.

When she’d become a woman, long-limbed and glossy-haired, Unkar had found another way for her to repay him for his _kindness_. But Rey was clever and pragmatic. She’d refused to spread her legs for him unless their union was condoned by the Church. She’d cited her piety and hoped he had the good sense not to marry an orphan, a bastard, a no-name.

Unkar’s lust had gotten the better of him, and the old baron had given his permission before succumbing, so she was a married woman. She was a serf, so her condition was one of bondage. She could not leave Alderaan. She was Unkar’s ward, and that condition was one of bondage, as well.

Unkar was ostentatious enough to celebrate the union. Trundle tables were laid out in the dusty square of ground in between the timber and morter houses of the village at the base of the hill. From atop the hill, the fortified manor house cast a long shadow.

Rey realized, now, that she would live in the shadow of the manor, in Unkar Plutt’s home, for the rest of her short and miserable life. Her nails cut into her palms under the trundle table. She’d been bathed and dressed in blue – a borrowed dress – in preparation for her wedding. She sat as a guest of honor – a ludicrous thing. She felt as if she was being mocked. The sidelong glances of the villagers pained her almost as much as the idea of her wedding night. As the shadow of the hill grew, that inevitable night drew closer.

The gates of the modest fortification opened as she craned her neck to look up at the manor. Racing the setting sun, four men rode down the sloping ramp to the village. As if war drums portended her fate, hoofbeats made the ground vibrate as they drew closer.

Unkar’s breath was hot near her ear. “The new baron has come to congratulate me on my marriage.”

Rey looked away. She doubted the new baron troubled himself with such things. His father hadn’t. For a moment, she indulged the fantasy that there was some crisis – war, or disease, or even the fiery pit of Hell opened up. She would endure anything, to put a stop to this.

Her heart sunk as the four horsemen looped around the village. They seemed, for an instant, as if they would not interrupt the lowly festivities. Then, the foremost horseman – the tallest – cut through the cluster of houses and, with the impudence only a Lord could be indulged, cantered right into the middle of the feast, as it were.

The new Baron of Alderaan leaned on the pommel of his saddle, arm crooked. The dust seemed to cling to his black surcoat, hair, and skin. It made his pallor – a hallmark of his nobility – more pronounced. His skin looked as if he had never worked in a field. Indeed, since he’d ridden back to Alderaan from Oxford to claim his title by virtue of primogeniture, he had been hidden away in his ancestral home.

“My Lord.” Unkar Plutt supplicated himself, bending nearly all of the way over the trundle table. “I – ”

 “I have come to exercise my right.” The baron interrupted him. He did not dignify the miller with a glance. As he hunched over the front of his saddle, predatorily, he looked only at Rey. Where his gaze went, everyone’s followed. Switching to courtly French, as if to flaunt his education and status, he added, “ _La droit de cuissage_.”

One word, Rey understood, for all her lack of education. _Cuissage_ meant _thigh_. As if she was a piece of meat, a slaughtered chicken hat was owed to the feudal lord. Just as livestock and wheat were owed to the Baron, so too were virgins. The old baron had had no interest in them, but _had_ he taken an interest in any one of them, he could have had her brought to him and had his way with her. No one would deny him their daughter – such a dalliance might even result in a favored bastard, or at the very least, a quiet bribe. Likewise, no bridegroom would deny him their new bride, even on a wedding night.

Plutt sputtered for the briefest of moment – this was highly irregular in Alderaan, given the old baron’s soft touch –  and then bowed again, his forehead beading in sweat. He sounded entreating, as if he knew he could not argue, but perhaps he could flatter and grovel. “My Lord – ”

Rey was sure she saw the young baron roll his eyes. He gestured, lazily, to the vassal at his right, and the man dismounted. He circled the table, and she realized he meant to come for her. Abruptly, she stood up from the trundle table and _ran_.

Another vassal waited at the opposite end of the trundle, cutting her off with his horse. As she stumbled back to avoid being trampled, the first grasped her arm and pushed her to his horse. He lifted her, avoiding her eyes, as if he was a bit embarrassed – not that he was taking her away like a piece of sold chattel, but because she’d run like a feral creature instead of bending to the baron’s will as her status demanded.

The entire transaction took place without her speaking a word, or being spoken to. The horse’s haunches jolted under her and without any further ado, the horses wheeled around, snorting and stomping.

Rey had never ridden a horse before. She clutched the arm of the man mounted behind her, terrified as they rode up the dirt ramp, the earth falling away below her. Her stomach seemed to fall equally as fall, all of the way out of her body.

They clattered into the courtyard of the walled manor, and the baron dismounted. He stomped over to his vassal’s horse and took Rey’s arm in his gloved hand. Without any grace, he tugged her off of the back of the horse, but her feet never touched the ground. Over his shoulder she was slung, like a sack of flour.

Rey knew her place. She knew this was his right. She knew that if she didn’t resist, he’d likely be gentle – or at the least, he wouldn’t drag her to the solar by the hem of her dress. But in a moment of panic, her primal instinct took over. With her fists, she beat at his back as if he was a knave or a robber, not a Lord. “Let me go!”

His hand came down sharply on the backs of her thighs, just above her buttocks, as if she was a disobedient child or a nervous horse. She wriggled all the harder, knocking her knees against his ribs.

At that, the baron dropped her without ceremony, onto the hard ground. Scrabbling at it, Rey tried to crawl away. Suddenly, his hand was tight in her hair, making the blood rush to her scalp. He didn’t yank her hair, but rather held it like the reins of a horse, keeping her in place. Her eyes watered, and even if she only pretended to be pious, she gasped, “God, have mercy.”

The baron tilted her face up to his. He looked curiously amused, as if he enjoyed subjugating her and thought her impertinence was charming. “ _I_ am your Lord and God.”

The men who’d come with the baron to fetch her from her own wedding – as if he was expecting resistance from his loyal subjects, or rather, subjects who were still loyal to his father – had the good sense not to jeer until he’d dragged her by the arm under the wide, low threshold of the door at north tip of the great stone house.

The great hall was quiet. Their footsteps slapped on the stone floor as Rey ran to keep up with the lord’s long strides. The old woman cleaning the hearth looked up, went wide-eyed, and then looked away.  She seemed to pretend not to see her master manhandle a peasant girl in a borrowed wedding gown, or to hear the noise from the courtyard. The vassal’s laughter and lewd jokes faded as they traversed the huge room.

It was a wonder the baron didn’t break her arm, as they mounted the creaky wooden stairs at the south end of the hall. She was grateful for the strength of his grip when he abruptly stopped at the top of the stairs and she nearly fell back down.

“My Lord.” Her voice echoed in the empty stone cavern of a room. She braced herself against his grip, recoiling from the wooden door to the solar. Behind the door, she knew, lay his private rooms. She tried to make a final entreaty to his decency – an entreaty to the decent boy who’d grown up playing in this great hall, full of mischief. “I – ”

Unceremoniously, the baron put his hand on her back – her _low_ back – and shoved her through the door. His heavy, booted foot kicked it shut behind him. Rey looked around the room, wildly. The only windows were set high, soaking the comfortable, well-furnished room in light. Her captor stood between her and the heavy, bolted door. This was a luxurious hunter’s trap.

The baron’s hair fell around his face, and he was breathing hard through his nose. He was much changed – by war, the weight of his new title and responsibilities, or just by time. She wondered if any one thing had made him cruel, or if he’d always been destined to be cruel, as most men of his stature were, because they could be with impunity.

For all his cruelty, he still looked vaguely charmed by the fight she’d put up. She’d expected him to punish her for her disobedience, not to find it amusing. An impish smile tugged at the corner of his stern mouth, as if he knew a secret. She recognized the boy in him, then.

 “You,” The baron told her, panting a little with the effort of manhandling her, but laughing at the same time, “Are very convincing, my sweeting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is my disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. I am taking huge liberties with English history circa 1250-1300. For example, jus primae noctis, or droit de cuissage, is probably just a folk tale. Most historians agree that while a noble could in fact take liberties with his serfs - mostly because it would have been quite difficult to turn him down! - there was no such universal right of the lord to have a virgin on her wedding night. But it makes for a great plot device, eh?
> 
> With that said, I will make an effort to touch on the realism or non-realism of certain elements of the story in the A/N. In this chapter, we see Rey basically forced into a tricky position concerning Unkar Plutt. That isn't totally unrealistic. Women had few rights - and peasent women even fewer. She would have been bound to the land the baron owns, unable to leave or marry on her own. As an orphan, she would have had no prospects, and no real ability to survive on her own if she refused her guardian's proposal of marriage and left his house. 
> 
> Kylo, on the other hand, has been off studying at Oxford (one of the oldest universities in the world) and training in the art of war, as most noble male adolescents did. As baron, he essentially owns a certain part of England. He protects the serfs living on that land and in a sense owns them as well, or at least their labor and their taxes. His dirty work is done by vassals, who were basically military underlings awarded tracts of land for their service.
> 
> "My sweeting" is a Medieval endearment - kind of like sweetheart. Now why would he call her that? Hmm.


	2. Chapter 2

Baffled, Rey stared at the baron. He didn’t come any closer, but the twitch on his lips became a smirk. She recognized that look – it was the look of a clever youth who’d played a particularly funny prank. She knew, then, that time had _not_ made him cruel.

Rey drew herself up, less afraid. She feared the man and lord. She didn’t fear the boy. She couldn’t help but be a little exasperated. “Did you _have_ to pull my hair?”

“I am sorry.” The baron approached her like she was a skittish horse, putting the finger of one glove in his mouth and biting it as he withdrew his hand from it. The glove fell to the floor as he placed his bare hand on her braided hair, stroking her scalp. From his height, it was almost as if he was blessing her or petting her on the head like a child.

“You are being too familiar, my lord.” Rey told him, forgetting, for a moment, that it was his prerogative to be familiar. It was his prerogative to have her flat on her back on the wide curtained bed in the corner of the solar, skirts pushed up and legs akimbo, if he so wished. She wasn’t entirely convinced that he didn’t. His gaze was oddly predatory. Defiantly, she tilted her chin up so that his hand slid from the crown of her head. It cupped around the nape of her neck, instead.

“We are familiar, aren’t we?” He cocked his head, amused.

“We were children, my lord.” Rey told him, knowing it wasn’t her place to remind him of _her place._

They had been children together, and familiar. His parents had indulged him a peasant playmate, being that he was their own surviving child. He’d been older, lankier, and domineering, dictating what they would play at. She’d been biddable and eager to please him – not because he was the baron’s son, but because he was the only person in the world who was kind to her. And he had been kind, even when he’d bossed her around and mussed her hair up. She’d adored him, without understanding that he was so far elevated above her socially that they might as well have been different species.

“We used to play that I was the lord and you my lady.” The baron smiled down at her, his thumb rubbing on the side of her neck. He said her name then, with easy familiarly that surprised her. She was sure he’d forgotten it, and her with it. “Little Rey.”

Rey struggled for a moment. She remembered that game, as well as she remembered playing soldiers with sticks or hide-and-seek in the herb gardens and orchards. It had all been so innocent – even in the games in which he was a brave knight and she his fair lady. Their hand-holding and clumsy, childish imitation of kisses had been as much in play as anything else. “We aren’t children anymore.”

He let go of the back of her head and gooseflesh prickled on her neck. She stood still as he crossed the room to fetch a carafe and pour from it. As she drank deeply from the goblet he offered, clutching it with two hands, she made a face at the strength of the wine. Serfs didn’t take wine with barons, but she needed it for fortification.

The baron gestured around the solar as if to say, _all of this is mine, now_. “I _am_ a lord, now.”

“Yes, my lord.” Rey answered, automatically. “But I am no lady.”

“Not a child, either.” He observed, looking her up and down critically, as if she was a heifer. Rey flushed. Suddenly, the borrowed blue dress – much finer than anything she’d ever worn – felt hopelessly shabby. Her sharp elbows made points in the sleeves, and the too-big fabric of the bodice stood away from her breasts no matter how tightly she was laced. Her skin was too dark, and her hair uncovered.

Still, the baron was looking at her appreciatively. A glossy, well-bred heifer then. She wrinkled her nose and reminded him, “I’m a married woman.”

“Not yet.” He remarked. He didn’t take his eyes off her as he sipped his wine. “The _Decretum Gratiani_ says that a marriage is invalid without both consent and consummation.”

“I am not as learned as you.” Rey said stiffly, after a pause. She was reminded, sharply, of her own poverty and ignorance, just as she’d been when he’d spoken French.

“You cannot have consented to wed that pig.” He told her, bluntly. “And you haven’t consummated the marriage.”

“I had no choice in the one matter.” Rey’s voice wavered. She was surprised he remembered the vile Unkar Plutt at all – or concerned himself at all with who she consented to wed.  “And I will have no choice in the other.”

“I can have his arm cut off for poaching.” The baron decreed, imperiously. She couldn’t quite tell if he was teasing her. She couldn’t have laughed. A stone had sunk into the pit of her belly. “Or I can cut off his – ”

“My lord!”

The baron grinned, seeming pleased that she was shocked. Lords weren’t supposed to be crude.

“My lord.” Rey flushed, correcting herself by repeating the honorific in a more submissive tone. She had no place chiding him no matter how rude he was. A part of her relished the idea of him castrating her new husband.

“My lady.” He imitated her as he made an exaggerated half-bow, just as he had as a little boy pretending to be a gallant knight.

Rey narrowed her eyes, under the distinct impression that he was mocking her and her lot in life. “I am no such thing.”

“We can play at it for a night.” He told her. He was not teasing, all of the sudden. His meaning was perfectly clear, just as it had been when he’d ridden into her wedding celebration and cited his baronial prerogative. “You being my lady.”

Rey swallowed hard. He was not a beast. Arrogant, yes, but not an unfeeling tyrant. Still, she had to ask. “Do I have any choice in _that_ matter?”

The baron stopped short, lowering his goblet. The red wine made a pretty stain on his mouth. His jaw twisted, and for a moment, he seemed angry. “You cannot think I would force –”

“When I cried and fought, I was not pretending!” Rey fought the urge to stomp her foot, petulantly. She’d had no idea what sort of man he’d become, and had gone to the manor like a prisoner to the gallows.

He set his wine aside and moved towards her slowly, as if he didn’t want to scare her. He kept his hands where she could see them, supplicant. His voice took on a crooning, apologetic tone. “I could never be cruel to you, my lady.”

“Do not call me that.” Rey felt the wrongness of it in her bones. She was a serf. To call her a lady was near blasphemous.  

“Commanding your lord and master?” Now, he didn’t seem amused by her impropriety. He seemed _aroused_ by it, though she couldn’t fathom why. His hands lowered, and suddenly he was reaching for her hips, his fingers sinking into the laces that connected her bodice and her skirts.

“ _Please_ do not call me that, my lord.” Rey’s voice was breathier than usual. Usually, she spoke too coarsely and directly for a woman.

Good-humored, the baron kissed her on the forehead. It was a brotherly sort of kiss. “As you wish, sweeting.”

“Please do not call me _that_ , either, my lord.” Rey scolded him. Her neck was sore from looking at him. He was standing so close. It felt ridiculous to reprimand such a tall man, let alone a baron.

 “Call me by my name.” The baron countered. It was an order, not a request. Rey hesitated. Something tender crossed his face. “Will you make me beg?”

No, she would not. That would be as if the world had turned upside down – a baron begging a bastard orphan. “No, my Lord Solo.”

“My Christian name.” He elaborated.

Rey licked her lips. The name was on the tip of her tongue. She’d said it a hundred times – yelling across the hall, screeching as he wrestled her into the weeds, batting her lashes at him as he pretended to court her. It was felt scandalous to say it now. “Ben.”

When she used his childhood name, the baron ducked towards her and kissed her the way he had when they’d been children – clumsily and briefly. It was as chaste and innocent a kiss as any they’d shared while play-acting. Then, his mouth opened and the warm, wet muscle inside it prodded at her lips. He swallowed the noise of disgruntled shame that she made, clutching at her with one arm and drawing her towards him as he hunched over her.  

In her shock, Rey dropped the goblet. It clattered to the floor, splattering its contents on her skirts. The sound jerked her from her reverie. She scrabbled at his chest with her nails until he stopped kissing her. With a groan, he tried to press his mouth to hers again. She turned her head away, looking down at her skirts in horror. As if the stain was foremost amongst her concerns, she blurted out, “This is a borrowed dress.”

Ben – she couldn’t help herself, that was how she still thought of him –  looked down at the garish wine stain on the blue dress. It looked almost a virgin’s blood stain on a bedsheet. His nostrils flared. “To _hell_ with the dress.”

He hooked his two foremost fingers in the lacings at the top of her bodice and tugged, sharply, as if he meant to rend the garment in two. The fabric stretched and gave way.

“No!” Rey slapped his hand away.

“No?” He repeated, looking as if he’d never heard that word before, or been slapped. He probably hadn’t – his life had been so privileged, relative to hers. He’d had rich foods, warm clothes, the affection of doting parents of an only son, an unrivaled education, and, probably, women. As many women as he liked. None of them had said _no_ to him.

“This dress belongs to Pava’s daughter.” Rey clutched her laces, knowing the new baron was probably unconcerned with the affairs of Pava or his daughter. She wanted to rub her thighs together under the fabric of the borrowed dress. They felt itchy and damp. “It was leant to me. You cannot rip it.”

“I will not rip it.” He reached again for the lace that he’d tugged loose, and pulled on it, winding it around his finger. As he wound his finger around and around, the fabric of her bodice parted, revealing the dirty white shift underneath it.

It was a wonder he knew how to unfasten a gown – she imagined that servants dressed him. But he did know how, and the dress was too big. As he tugged, the kirtle and shift loosened, and started to slip off one bony shoulder.

Embarrassed, Rey turned around, holding the loose fabric up with her hands so he could not see her bare chest. She felt the heat and breadth of his body behind her, and then the hot, shameful seal of his mouth on the juncture of her neck and shoulder. His arms wrapped around her waist.

Rey choked for a moment, envisioning the alternative – violent, meaty-handed Plutt. She had heard stories, seen women limp away from their new husband’s beds and seen bloody sheets furtively taken to be washed or burned. She’d steeled herself for the violence of it all. She hadn’t expected the _heat_ of it. Her voice wavered, though not with fear. “You do mean to have me.”

“I mean to save you.” The baron leant his forehead on her shoulder-blade. He sounded very sheepish and young. “I asked after you, when I came back. My mother told me of you were betrothed to the miller and I could not stand the thought of it.”

Rey sniffed, leaning back into his chest. It felt very warm and comforting, somehow. She remembered sleeping in the hay next to him as a little girl, curled close for warmth. As a boy, he’d pretended to be a heroic knight, and she wondered now if he still saw himself that way – riding down the hill to save her at the last moment.

By rights, she could no more refuse him than she could the miller. But something told her than if she told him to take leave of her, he would obey her. It was a ludicrous thing – a _baron_ , obeying her. A ludicrous and intoxicating thing.

“Let me bed you first.” The baron’s words tickled her ear as he lipped at it. His hands kneaded at her belly and hips. They seemed to burn her skin through the itchy wool of the stained dress. “I will be gentle with you, sweeting. Just as I was when we were children.”

Rey looked at the wide bed in the corner of the room. Come tomorrow, she would not be a child anymore. She would be a woman, whether by her new husband's hand, or by baron’s hand. 

The baron's hands were so very warm. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben's motives aren't totally altruistic. He certainly doesn't want her to suffer losing her virginity to a brute - or be married to one at all, really - but he also is definitely still holding a candle for her from back when he was twelve. Or, you know, holding a fucking blowtorch. 
> 
> P.S. If Ben seeems a little sexually aggessive, well, that makes sense within the historical context. Feminism was not a thing yet. And he is, you know, a baron. 
> 
> P.S. Will they, or won't they? And, just as importantly, will Ben cut off Unkar Plutt's dick?


	3. Chapter 3

“Please do not ask me to give myself to you.” Rey told him, staring at the dusty floor. Her voice was very thick in her throat. She sounded, appropriately, as if she was begging. Through her shoulder blades and ribs, she thought she felt the baron’s heartbeat stammer. “Order me.”

The baron turned her to face him, almost violently. His gloved hand gripped her chin, forcing her to look at him. That look of anger – or humiliation? – passed behind his eyes once more. “I am not a brute.”

“It is your _right_ , my lord.” Rey interrupted him. His grip on her chin was brutish, despite what he said.

The baron made a low, hissing sound through his teeth, and let go of her chin. He stalked around the solar like a caged animal, speaking almost to himself. “I may _pretend_ to –.”

“Ben, please.” The sound of his name stopped him short. It took some effort not to address him by his title. “Just as you pretended for my husband’s sake, pretend for my sake.”

Rey _needed_ Ben to pretend to overcome her. She would pretend to be overcome. She could not admit to herself that she would give herself to him willingly. That would make her an adulteress, or worse, just a common whore. She might have been a bastard and an orphan, but she wasn’t a whore. She might not have been truly pious, but she had her pride. She was too proud to be a whore, and too proud to admit that she was afraid of Unkar Plutt. She wanted to spend her wedding night with Ben instead – gentle Ben, the boy who’d kissed her cheek and winked at her as snuck her fruit and cheese. That made her a coward.

Ben’s nostrils flared for a moment. His glove – the one remaining on his hand – creaked as he clenched his fist. When he spoke, his voice was very low. “Take off that dress, or I _will_ rip it.”

He understood her.

Rey fumbled for her laces. They needn’t take off all their clothes. They needn’t bear down onto the broad, curtained bed in the corner. Peasants tumbled in the hay or dirt, with their skirts shoved up and dirty braies pushed down to their ankles.

Perhaps lords and ladies did things differently.

The too-big kirtle pooled around her ankles, tangling with her dusty shift. The solar was well-lit, and she wondered whether he could see her nipples, purplish pink and protruding, or the triangle of dark hair between her legs through it. The rough fabric seemed impossibly itchy. She fidgeted under it and under the heat of his gaze.

Ben reached out and touched, with his bare hand, the stings that gathered the top of the thin garment. “This is not borrowed, is it?”

Rey looked down at the shift. It was one of the few things that was _hers_. It had been white, once. It was almost grey with dust. The hem was mud-stained. It was threadbare, worn thin. Surely he _could_ see through it. “No.”

In a swift motion, one gloved hand and one bare hand grasped the gathered fabric at the neck of the shift, and tore it in two. The shift rendered right down her belly, as if she was a gutted deer. In despair, Rey repeated, clutching the torn garment to her chest, “ _No_!”

“Pava cannot be angry about that.” Ben told her, breathing hard. She was surprised he’d remembered which man’s daughter she’d borrowed the kirtle from. To a lord, peasants were dispensable and interchangeable. “It isn’t borrowed.”

“ _I_ am angry.” Rey managed, red-faced. She had no right to be angry – she’d asked for him to play this part. Still, she had so few things for herself, and no means to buy a new shift. She’d have to sew this one up and live with the seam running up the middle, like a scar.  

“I will give you in something finer.” Ben looked wildly covetous, all of the sudden. “Something made from silkworms.”

Rey made a face. A baron could take her to bed regardless of her marital status, but he could not elevate her above her station. That would somehow be far more scandalous than just rutting on her. “You can bed me, but you cannot dress me in silks.”

“I will dress and undress you as I see fit.” The baron seemed to remember the game they were playing – or perhaps he just remembered his station and hers. With both hands, he parted the torn shift and looked at her breasts. His mouth hung slightly open, and his lips were moist. After a moment, he nodded, as if he was satisfied with a horse he was buying. Then, he jerked his head towards the other end of the solar. “Lie down on the bed.”

The torn shift fluttered to the ground as Rey padded across the room. Her breathing sounded very harsh in her ears. She laid on her back on the bed, her limbs shaky like a colt’s. It felt oddly like lying on a funeral pyre. The only part of her body that was covered was her feet. The rest of her broke out in gooseflesh.

The baron loomed over her, fiddling with his leather belt. “You wear your boots in bed?”

Rey looked down the length of her body. She had never really looked at herself naked – she’d always been in a hurry to wash and dress, worried Unkar would see her. She was very pale where her clothes covered her, and very tan where they didn’t. Her stomach shrunk in slightly from hunger. Her booted feet hung off the edge of the bed.

Rey slept in her boots – but then, she didn’t sleep in a bed. She slept on a pallet in the loft in the miller’s house. She looked back up at the baron. He looked amused. “I don’t have a bed.”

With an air of determination, Ben tugged her boots off, his hands surprisingly gentle. He dropped each dust, worn leather article on the floor, and then took off his second glove. With his bare hands, he weighed her ankles in his hands, and then lifted the left. He bent over it and kissed the top of her foot. As he lifted her other foot and kissed it in turn, Rey shivered, both from the cold and the indecent thrill of seeing _him_ kiss _her_ feet, like a loyal vassal at the feet of a king. Or rather, a queen.

Then, as if she was a prostitute and not a queen, the baron drew her legs apart, pining her splayed thighs with his hands. Alarmed, Rey reared off the bed, trying in vain to close her legs and sit up. The feather mattress whispered under her as she flailed.

The baron’s grip held fast as he leaned forward over her and sucked her nipple into his mouth, like he was a babe. It felt odd, at first – his teeth were sharp. Rey looked down at him as he nursed at her, her chin resting on her sternum. She was utterly baffled. She wasn’t a wet nurse, and he was a grown man. Then, his tongue laved wetly over the sore point of her nipple, where his teeth had grazed. It felt like a pleasurable little tickle. She lost her balance and fell back onto the mattress.

Ben huffed against her breast. He was _laughing_ at her. It irked her. As if in apology, he bit gently into the soft flesh around her nipple. Drawing away, he licked his lower lip, looking down at the petal-shaped bruises he’d left behind.

The unexpected pleasure of a tongue and teeth on her skin was distracting. Rey’s legs had gone lax under his hands, splayed shamelessly open. As the baron bore down between them, Rey remembered to resist him – or rather, to pretend to. It was no use. His hands were too strong. They kept her thighs open even as she squirmed and kicked in protest.

She ought to have fought harder when he pressed his mouth to her sex, but she went still, instead. She shuddered. As if he was surprised she’d stopped fighting him, Ben looked up, open-mouthed.

“That is a _sin_.” Rey panted, appalled at his behavior and at the shameful clench of her lower belly. The Church forbade sodomy, and putting his mouth between her trembling thighs _was_ sodomy. Even _she_ knew that, and most of what she knew about sexual congress was from seeing cows in the fields.

“You can say the Pater Noster for me.” Ben said, his voice muffled by the milky skin of her thigh. “I will not repent.”

He was a wicked sinner – the Devil himself, with a hot forked tongue flickering as a serpent’s did. Rey tried to recite the Pater Noster. The Latin words she’d known since she was a child turned into a blasphemous babble of pleasure as he lapped at her, his nose bumping against her.

She didn’t stop him. She couldn’t protest that he was making a sinner of her. She was a sinner, too. She might as well be a shameless one. She tipped her head back and scrunched up her face as he suckled in between her legs, much as he had at her breasts. Her belly roared and stiffened. “Je _\- Jesus_.”

If anyone heard what she said after _that_ , they would have thought she was howling it in pain.

“Amen.” Ben’s voice came from deep in his chest. She’d fought tooth and nail as he’d dragged her to the solar. Now, wobbly-limbed, she barely resisted as he straddled her like a disobedient horse. He wound her lose hair around his hand, like reins.

With his other hand, the baron parted the flaps of his surcoat, exposing his laces. The stiff fabric of the tunic had hidden a bulge in his hose. It seemed to give him trouble as he unlaced. He exhaled through his teeth, exasperated. He didn’t let go of her hair, as if he was afraid she would try to escape him.

Far from it. Rey reached out and helped him unlace his hose. As the fabric parted, she drew her hand away, startled by the swollen, red organ that poked out. Making a disgruntled noise, Ben grasped her hand drew it back. He pressed her palm against the engorged appendage, tilting his head back for a moment.

Rey had seen plenty of similar organs, though none so _large_ , and none in a similar state. It looked painful. His face screwed up as if in agony as she thumbed at the wet, mushroom-shaped cap at the tip of it. That _must_ have hurt; he hissed and pulled her hand away all of the sudden, kissing her palm.

Ben had been a lanky, tall boy. He was a giant of a man. He nearly crushed her as he lay down on top of her, wedging his body in between her thighs. This time she didn’t kick at him. She looked down, mouth agape, as he palmed the mound at the base of her belly.

Animals did this, albeit _a tergo_. Women and men were not supposed to do it that way. But that was the only way Rey understood that it could be done, from seeing cows and horses. As Ben spread the soft lips of her body, nudging the fleshy head of his cock against her, and she felt only curiosity. Then, his hips jerked forward, his weight settled onto her, and she felt pain – burning, tearing pain. She yelped, scrabbling at his shoulders.

Ben made a shushing noise, nuzzling her hair. Feeling utterly betrayed, Rey turned her head away. She felt her eyes prick. Her voice was thick with tears. “You said you would be gentle.”

“Sweeting.” He thrust shallowly against her and she realized with horror that he wasn’t even all of the way inside of her. She whimpered, squirming and trying to ease the unbearable tightness. “Little Rey. You are so brave. You needn’t be.”

Rey choked on a sob as he pressed deeper into her, straining against the tight muscles of her body. She felt ashamed for crying. It didn’t hurt so much, now, and doubtless it hurt less than it would if he were a thoughtless brute like her husband. He had always protected her – from the dark, from bullies, from starving to death when Unkar was angry with her.

Their hip bones bumped together. The hair at the top of his groin tickled her belly. He nuzzled at her nose, cajoling her and kissing her with the clumsy sweetness of a little boy. It occurred to her that he _was_ being gentle, as he began to move against her in great, slow, heaving thrusts. She begrudged him his kisses, grateful for that.

Still, he was a sinner, not a saint. He began to rut against her, his breath warm in her face and eyes wild. She was sure he was rubbing the inside of her raw. The friction of it felt almost _hot_. She winced; he saw. He eased out of her, and sat back on his haunches.

For a moment, Rey thought that it was all over. She wanted to ask, _is that it?_

Hunching over her, the baron drew his hand up and down his member over and over. It was shiny and wet, like the insides of her thighs. Rey wished that he had taken off his surcoat, shirt, and hose. She wanted to see what he looked like naked and to feel his skin against hers. He’d only pulled out what was necessary and now he pulled on it, urgently, bucking into his hand.

Ben groaned her name, for the first time – _just_ her name, not _little Rey,_ or _sweeting_  –  as if she was a woman, and not a child. She supposed she was a woman now. His face contorted, and he grunted, the muscle in his neck straining.  Pearls of milky white liquid spurted from the angry, blood-red head of his member and scattered across the skin of her belly, sliding into the hollow of her navel and the dip of her hipbone. The droplets congealed and dripped down into their hair between her thighs.

Like a felled tree, the baron collapsed onto the mattress next to her, one arm flung across her sticky belly. His back was rising and falling rapidly.

“I would have played lord and lady with you, not master and servant.” He said, raggedly. He sounded almost angry.

Rey blinked up at the canopy of the bed. It was richly embroidered. The pattern was like the night sky, full of moons and constellations. She hadn’t noticed. “You are a baron, and I am a bastard.”

“How unfair.” Ben rolled onto his pack, and regarded the stars with her. “That I can take whatever I want, but I cannot keep it for myself.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... think of this as emotional slow burn, but physical lighter fluid. 
> 
> P.S. Oral sex and sex a tergo (doggy-style, for you 21st century kids) were strictly forbidden by the Church... which just made it all so much hotter. Ben's pull-out game would also be frowned upon, since the Church's position was that sex should be for procreative purposes only. What can I say? He's blasphemous, and he's not trying to make an heir and a spare. 
> 
> P.P.S. Also, nudity wasn't necessarily as taboo as it is now- Rey would probably have seen plenty of flaccid penises in her day. She would not have seen an erect one or had much knowledge of the mechanics of sex. On that note, this obviously wasn't a romantic or intimate sexual experience. Rey just wanted to get the whole virginity thing out of the way with a Nice Guy, and Ben doesn't treat her like an equal. That is intentional. Emotional slow burn, guys! 
> 
> P.P.P.S. I appreciate how many of you are Team Castration.


	4. Chapter 4

The curtains of the four-poster bed had been drawn closed, creating a warm cocoon. In it, Rey slept.

Unkar had never spared her blankets. At night, she curled in a ball, her fists tucked in her armpits. She laid awake, desperate to sleep.

When she woke in the baron's bed, she thought she was dreaming. The embroidered night sky above her looked fantastic, and she was warm – warmer than she’d ever been. Everything surrounding her was soft and none of her bones was stiff from being pressed against dirt or wood for too long.

Between her legs was sore, as if she’d been kicked by a horse repeatedly. Her belly was sticky with dried seed. Perhaps this wasn’t a dream. Perhaps she was in Hell, or Purgatory, since she was a sinner. It was so warm.

Rey sat up, drawing the blankets around herself, and drew the curtain aside. The fire had been banked during the night. The coals glowed in the dim grey morning light. By their glow, she knew that she was alone.

Laid on the pillow opposite her was a roughly constructed bundle of wildflowers. Incredulous, Rey stared at it. Ben had picked her such a posy many times as a little boy – alternately, he collected weeds and flowers for his mother. She’d saved them even as they’d dried out and become brittle, until Unkar had sneered and tossed the dried bundles in the fire.

 _Don’t cry, little Rey,_ Ben would tell her, in that almost-mocking, tender way of his. He would pick her more flowers, present them with a flourish and an impish, sloppy kiss on the back of her hand.

Sometime in the night, Ben had left flowers in the bed. She’d left blood. There was a dark speckle on the bedsheets, between her thighs. She’d expected a swath or even a puddle of blood. It seemed unfair that such a minor blood-letting caused such a great pain. She winced as she swung her legs over the side of the mattress, her thighs aching and the place between them throbbing. The stain was brownish and dried already. She had been asleep for hours.

She wondered whether the servant who’d come in to tend the fire and sweep the hearth had seen her, naked and tucked under the heavy blankets of the curtained bed, and pitied her. If that servant knew the truth – that she’d willing lain down for the baron – he wouldn’t pity her.

Her clothes were strewn about. She gathered them. She didn’t bother to wipe away the blood between her legs or the baron’s spend from her stomach. She’d bathe in the river later, baptizing herself again. Until then, she’d keep the sticky skin-stains as reminders – whether to cherish or self-flagellate, she couldn’t decide.

With shaking fingers, Rey knotted the ripped shift at her neck. Ben wouldn’t give her a new one or a silk one. She wasn’t too young to be cynical about men. Like all men, the baron had made promises in the dark and disappeared in the morning.

She’d given him what he wanted, after all – what he was entitled to. In return, Ben – no, the baron, she must call him that from now on – had left her to the mercy of her husband.

 _Don’t cry, little Rey_ , she reminded herself. All children’s games had to come to an end. She was a woman now.

***

Rey trudged down the muddy slope to the village, holding the hem of the borrowed blue dress up it wouldn’t be soiled. The wine stain on it couldn’t be helped. Better wine than blood. She would return the dress to Pava’s daughter, wrap her brown, dull rags around herself, and remember her place.

As she passed the first wattle and daub cottage, she felt eyes burning her from within the doorframe. Her neck burned. The villager ought to look at her with pity. The baron’s display of brutishness in front of God and his serfs had ensured that.

“Your husband is in the stocks.” The man called after her. “For petty theft.”

Rey turned around. “What?”

The man gestured towards the same flat dirt where her wedding festivities had been held. His gaze flickered over her.

Rey turned and ran through the cluster of houses. She jostled Pava’s daughter – she’d explain away the wine stain later – and Wedge on the way.

Unkar Plutt was standing in the stocks, bend double and yowling curses. When he say her, his face went very red and he spat out a nasty word, his teeth bared. “Fucking _witch_!”

Rey froze. There was no love between her and her new husband, but she had felt an inexplicable urge to help him. It as the Christian thing to do. The _wifely_ thing. Now, she recoiled. Unkar had always been physically repulsive to her, but he was even more so in rage.

“How did you trick him?” Unkar screamed at her. His voice pitched up, hysterical. “Your cunt isn’t that rare! What did you do, you fucking witch?”

She smelled iron, tangy and sharp. It overpowered the scent of mud and sweat that hung like a fog over the village, and the scent of sin on her. Unkar’s legs were soaked in blood, his braies heavy with it. The lower half of his body hung limply, as if his legs and pelvis were crushed and useless. His eyes were bulging out of his head with pain and fury.

Rey remembered Ben’s promise to cut off Unkar’s genitals. He’d said it with casual arrogance, as if he was accustomed to violence. She’d barely flinched. A savage impulse in her had rejoiced at the suggestion.

Now her, stomach turned. She recognized that no one looked on her with pity. They looked on her with mistrust. Unkar screamed after her, wordlessly, delirious with pain, as she turned on her heel and stumbled away, tripping on the hem of the too-big blue dress.

***

Rey latched the door to Unkar’s house with shaking fingers. The wooden latch would hardly hold if a mob came for her to burn her at stake. She looked wildly around the room for something to barricade the door with.

She huddled by the hearth, crouching and wrapping her arms around her knees. She could not leave the plot of land she was tied to – she was a serf. She could not run to the manor and beg for mercy – she was too proud for that. She waited, and wondered whether someone would cut down Unkar’s dead body, bled out, or drag him back to his house, alive but crippled.

***

Late that night, she heard hoofbeats on the soft, rain-wet ground. No one in the village road horseback. Only the lord and his vassals did. She feared what the villagers would do to her if they thought that she’d bewitched the baron She didn’t fear the baron himself. She unlatched the door.

The  baron left his men outside. He looked like a giant inside the wattle and daub house. When she latched the rough-hewn door behind him, and they were alone, he took her in his arms.

Rey struggled against the iron bands of his forearms. “My lord, no.”

“Are we playing at that again?” He asked her, his breath hot in her hair.

Rey was overcome with an urge to slap him. It would be treasonous. She balled her fists. “My husband is in the stocks.”

The baron unwrapped his arms from her around her waist and narrowed his eyes at her, as if it displeased him that she would plead her husband’s case before him. “He did not pay his taxes. That is theft.”

Rey’s chest tightened. Unkar had cheated people – and the old baron – out of flour for years. It was no secret. He was long overdue to stand in the stocks, but the blood on his braises haunted her. His legs and groin looked like they had been crushed, trampled into useless, twisted stumps. “His legs – ”

“He ran like a dog.” Ben said, shortly. “I rode him down like one.”

Rey winced, imaging horse hooves crushing bone and muscle. That was a cruel fate, far cruel than petty theft warranted. “You could have trampled him to death –”

The baron’s voice dropped an octave. It came from somewhere deep in his chest. “He coveted what is not his.”

“ _You_ covet what is not yours.” Rey whispered. She felt she must whisper to rebuke him. To yell and stamp her feet would make such a rebuke even more inappropriate.

 “This land is my birthright, and you are bound to it.” The baron stepped closer to her. His eyes burned with near-religious fervor. His nostrils flared as he looked her up and down. She was suddenly conscious the ripped shift, and of the stains left on her skin. “You belong to _me_ , your husband be damned.”

“You _have_ damned him!” Rey cried, furious with him beyond all reason. “You’ve crippled him.”

“Last night, I exercised my right.” The baron reached her cheek; she turned away. “This morning, I did my duty.”

Rey gave a watery, heaving laugh. In a perverse way, he was right. Like his father and grandfather before him, he was charged with enforcing the law and protecting the serfs who toiled on his land. They paid a heavy price for his protection – their freedom. She could no more change her circumstances than a tree or a cow.

“You said you would protect me, and you’ve ruined me.” Her voice broke, wearily.

Now, the baron looked angry. “ _He_ would have ruined you. Not only your body but your soul.”

Rey turned in small circles, putting her head in her hands. “You’ve had my body, what do you care for my soul?”

“I…” The baron went silent, a strange look crossing his face, as if he’d realized something long mysterious to him. He opened and then closed his mouth, chewing his lip. Finally, formally, he professed, as if he were a character in an epic poem about love and tragedy, “I have loved you -”

“The way one child loves another!” Rey retorted, remembering the silly posy he’d left on the pillow for her. It made her cheeks flush.

“The way a man loves a woman, if you would let me!” He interrupted her, heatedly. His jaw clenched, and his face turned crimson. Rey understood, then, that he wasn’t angry. He was overcome with some other emotion.

She felt her belly tighten. Those words should not have made her fingertips and scalp tingle, but they did. “That is unnatural.”

“I have loved you since we were children.” Ben – he was Ben, now, not a baron – went on, determinedly. “Nothing could be more natural.”

“They’ll burn me.” Her voice pitched up, nervously. Sexual congress was natural – everyone knew that, even animals engaged in that – but it was unnatural for a baron to profess love to a low-born woman. It was _criminal_. Such a declaration could only come about by witchcraft, and witchcraft was punishable by death.

“I burn _for_ you.” Ben reached for her, longing clear on his face. She knew if she let him, he would have her again, on the dirt floor of her husband’s house. The dirt would stain her dress, adding to her shame.

Rey backed away. “Unkar called me a witch.”

At that, Ben stopped short. “You are no witch. I… I am just _mad_.”

Rey exhaled, slowly. In truth, he had seduced her, but she would be blamed. She went closer to the fire, imagining its flames licking her skin. Burning might be kinder than starving, she thought. Without a husband, she would starve. No one would take pity on her. No one had the resources to. “People _will_ think you mad.”

Ben chewed his lip, as if thinking. His brow creased. Finally, he said, obstinately, “I care not. I _will_ have you as my mistress.”

Rey would have laughed at his childlike stubbornness if the situation were not so dire. “Your wife will not abide that.”

“I have no wife.” Ben shrugged. “And when I do, I will keep her here and you in York.”

Rey stiffened, offended, somehow by the idea of him having a wife – although she knew he must, to make himself an heir and fill his coffers. He would marry some woman of similar station – a baron’s daughter, or even a duke’s younger daughter. “In York?”

“You will want for nothing there.” Ben promised. His voice became low and sweet, like honey or wine. “And I will not want for you, sweeting.”

Rey looked down at her hands. Something grew like a weed in her belly – hope. She did not hope that the baron was earnest in his misguided profession of love. Love was a silly thing bards sang about.

She did not hope for love. She hoped for emancipation. She could not read or write or speak French, but she knew the laws that kept her bound to the dirt she stood on. She knew that if she fled to York – or rather, if the baron took her there and made her his mistress – for a year and a day, she would have her freedom from the land she was born on.

The baron was watching her very intently. If she refused him, she would burn or starve. Knowing that, he awaited her answer, his damp mouth hanging slightly open with lust. His voice was low, throaty rattle. He may have intended to issue an order, but he sounded as if he was pleading with her. “Let me have you not as your lord, but as your lover.”

Rey looked back into the fire, and lied to him. “I am yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ben is 100% not above playing dirty to get what he wants. 
> 
> P.S. It would have been considered unnatural (almost like bestiality!) for a high-born man to have a committed romantic relationship with a low-born woman. Medieval people often attributed unnatural things to witchcraft, which was punishable by burning or strangulation. Rey is right to worry what people will think. 
> 
> It wasn't unusual for elite men to keep a mistress for sex and marry for purely economic or political purposes. Being a baron's mistress would actually be a pretty sweet gig - especially if you gave birth to a bastard the baron was fond of and might want to elevate socially. 
> 
> Serfs could not leave the land they were bound to. If they ran away for a year and a day, they could become freemen (although freewomen lacked autonomy on account of their sex).
> 
> So, in sum, Ben wants Rey, and Rey wants to get the hell out of Dodge.
> 
> P.P.S. this is pretty plotty and heavy so I started a literal mountain of fluff called In Short Order. Check it out!


	5. Chapter 5

The priest, Lor San Tekka, was a man with a certain dignity about him, despite his unprestigious congregation. He had been born poor, but he was a clergyman. He ministered to the unwashed masses and rubbed shoulders with the baron when he said Mass in their private chapel alike.

San Tekka must have perplexed why the impious young baron had summoned him to the private chapel at the south corner of the manor on a day that wasn’t Sunday. He bowed his head slightly. As a member of the third estate, he did not owe the same fealty as a serf would. “My Lord.”

“Father.” Ben’s little nod of respect was equally shallow. “You presided over the miller’s marriage yesterday?

San Tekka’s eyes flickered to where Rey stood, in the shadows, near the altar. “Hello, child.”

Ben looked almost annoyed. “Plutt is impotent.”

San Tekka looked back at Rey, his wizened brow creasing. “Have you called the physician?”

“There is no need for a physician. He was trampled by a horse.” Ben interrupted. He moved bodily, blocking Rey from the priest’s view. He was a far broader and taller man. “The marriage should be annulled.”

“The Archbishop will not grant an annulment if a physician will not swear that consummation is impossible.” San Tekka said, reproachfully, but with a modicum of respect. “And if the wife will not swear that it has not already taken place.”

“ _I_ will swear it.” Ben said, arrogantly. “She was in my bed last night.” He sounded curiously proud of something that should have shamed him to admit to a priest. For her part, Rey felt hot shame flood her body. It paralyzed her.

The priest regarded the baron for a moment, and then said, far more bluntly than he should have, even if he was a clergyman and commanded respect in his own right, “You ought to have called me here to repent your sins. I will not give you leave to sin again and nor will the Archbishop.”

“Very well.” Ben’s nostrils flared, but his voice remained level. He refused to repent. “I’ll kill the miller, and then she will be a widow. Better a widow than an adulteress.”

“Ben!” Rey blurted out, before she could stop herself. Both men turned to look at her, and she realized what she’d done. She’d betrayed their intimacy – or rather, the intimacy they’d shared as children. The baron had asked her to call him by his Christian name but not in front of other people.

Lor San Tekka looked carefully at her, his eyes hooded. “There is no need for the Archbishop to issue an annulment if the marriage is void _ab initio_.” He crossed the stone floor, approaching the altar. Rey flinched. “Did you give your consent to marry the miller? Your spiritual consent?”

There was a long, drawn silence. Ben shifted on his feet, as if he was furious that San Tekka was deferring to Rey, rather than him.

“No.” Rey whispered. She hadn’t consented spiritually. She had given her consent out of necessity, but her soul had withered as she said the words.

San Tekka sighed. He did not seem surprised. Unkar Plutt’s reputation was such that even he, removed from the gossip and quarrels of village life, knew it.  He looked back at Ben, who seemed strangely relieved. “And you consent to _this_?”

It was clear was San Tekka meant. He knew what the baron wanted – that was no secret – but he wanted to know what _she_ wanted. Rey thought about her freedom – about one-hundred and one days – and about the baron’s warm hands on her bare skin. Her voice very hollow with shame, she said, “Yes.”

The priest sighed, deeply. He touched her head very gently, as if he were blessing her. “I will strike the record, then. May God have mercy on your soul.”

***

The unexpected ecstasy of having her legal bonds with Unkar Plutt severed had been short-lived. Rey had been slung unceremoniously onto the back of a horse, newly unmarried, and secreted out of the village at dawn. Clinging to the baron’s belt with both hands, she’d felt free as a hawk soaring over the countryside. There wasn’t another soul on the road to York. For a beautiful stretch of hours, Rey had felt like there wasn’t another soul in England.

There were more souls in York alone than she could have ever imagined. The walled city was louder and busier than any fantastical place Rey had dreamed up during lonely nights. She sat side-saddle, awkwardly, clutching the reins with white fingers, as the baron led his horse down the narrow, mud-and-excrement filled streets.

It was a small comfort that none of people they passed – beggars, fruit-sellers, students, scoundrels – looked at her with any curiosity or fear. She would have been a pariah in Alderaan. A hard day’s ride away, she was a stranger.

A timber-frame and stone house in York abutted the cathedral. It stood, tall and narrow, across the cobbled square from the guild house. It felt wrong to be in the shadow of God’s church, living in abject sin. She worried, for a moment, that it was a house of prostitution 

Ben handed his horse’s reins to a stable boy and held his arms out, expectantly. With some reluctance, Rey slid off of the quivering, terrifying beast and into them. Her legs were wobbling, both from nerves and disuse. “Is this an inn?”

“This is a guildsman’s house.” Ben strode towards the door. “He’s a freeman, now, but he served my father for years.”

“He’s a freeman?” Rey echoed, feeling a jolt in her gut. She tried to school her features.

“He made the armor that saved my father’s life.” Ben said, by way of explanation. He lifted his fist and knocked heavily on the oak door. A large man – larger, somehow, than the baron – opened the door. They spoke in low voices.

Rey could not help but look at the large man with resentment. He’d been manumitted by the old Baron, out of gratitude or affection. _Ben_ was the baron now. He could manumit her, but he wouldn’t. He intended to keep her. It was a bondage far more tolerable – and pleasurable – than that which she was used to, but it was bondage nonetheless.

With the flick of his fingers, the baron gestured that she should follow him into the guildsman’s house. Helplessly, she did. She could have run and tried to evade him for a year and day. She did not. She did not know a soul in York. She knew him. She had known him all her life.

The rickety stairs were impossibly noisy. Rey wondered if the racket they were making would alert every resident of the house – the large man and his apprentice on the bottom floor, and the guildsman’s wife on the second – that they were going to the third floor to do ungodly things.

“I’ll lease the room for two shillings each week.” Ben explained, as he shut the door behind them. “And you, too.”

Rey flushed, irrationally angry. She supposed he ought to treat her like a whore – she was using her body to leverage her freedom, which was worth more than gold or silver pieces to her – but it grated after the silly romantic things he’d said in Unkar’s house in front of the roaring fire.

Ben didn’t seem to notice the angry set of her jaw. He strode over to the window and flung the shutters open, dazzling her with light briefly. Standing silhouetted against the window, he started to unfasten his surcoat, unashamed. He nodded over at the low, lumpy bed in the corner of the small, dim room. “It’s early yet but I want you in bed.”

Rey drew herself up to her full height. “You are not the Baron of York.”

Ben paused, his surcoat open to his waist. He looked surprised for a moment, and then faintly amused. He approached her slowly, peeling off his gloves and throwing them on the floor. “I am a baron _wherever_ I go, sweeting.”

“What am I, here, then?” Rey stood her ground.

“My mistress.” He said, bluntly. He brushed her cheek with the backs of his bare fingers, longing plain on his face. His voice dropped an octave. It lost the casual arrogance with which he’d directed her to get on the bed. He _begged_. “Will you not go to bed with me before I ride back to Alderaan?”

Rey swallowed hard. Her belly felt very heavy and warm despite the nervous throb of her pulse in it. She wondered whether his pleading was just an illusion – whether she was no more free to refuse him here than she had been in Alderaan. “Take off your boots and surcoat.”

Her lover did as she bid, and then some. Naked, he was pale and broad as a birch tree. The organ between his legs was even more frightening when it wasn’t couched in layers of fabric. It was ruddy and veined. Even his large hand seemed dwarfed as he pulled on it, standing unashamed in front of her.

He saw that she was wide-eyed, and began, _“_   _A_   _curiosity hangs by the thigh of a man, under its master’s cloak…”_

Rey flushed. “That is crude.”

Flippantly, he went on, still stroking his _curiosity_ _,_ as it were. _“_ _H_ _e means to poke with the head of his hanging thing that familiar hole of matching length which he has often filled before_  . _”_

Rey covered her mouth, laughing despite herself. “It did not feel of matching length.”

“It will feel more familiar this time.” Ben crowded her towards the bed, his member poking at her belly through her disheveled, dusty skirts. There was an impish gleam in his eye as he played with the laces of her kirtle. “Do I have to look for your cunny under all those skirts?”

Rey flushed deeper, wondering whether it would ever feel familiar to be so stretched. As haughtily and bravely as she could, she said, “Unlace me.”

Ben told her, as he fumbled at the strings, “I am not adept at undressing women. I’d rather rip this.”

“Don’t, I haven’t got another.”

Ben pressed a kiss to her neck, right by the lobe of her ear. “You are _my_ mistress now, not another man’s wife. I will buy you another.”

This time, Rey believed his promise. The kirtle fell to the floor and Ben tugged her shift off, balling it up. He grinned when he saw the pale skin of her belly, still unwashed. It had a sheen on it from his spend. “Get on your back, you stubborn woman.”

The mattress was made of straw. It crinkled loudly as she settled down onto it. For a brief moment, Rey wondered why she was spreading her legs so willingly, so wantonly. Then, she realized that, in the same irrational way that he was amused by her contrariness, she liked his teasing. It reminded her of him pulling her hair as a little boy, sticking his tongue out at her as she cried.

His tongue was at work in the dip at the hollow of her throat now. He ducked his head down and bit the milky skin above her nipple, unhinging his jaw and taking a mouthful of her flesh between his teeth. As they sunk down into her skin, she wailed softly at the ceiling. Like a barn cat, he licked the bite marks in apology, his tongue rough and scratchy.

His hand ran down her belly and between her legs, fumbling around for a moment. She was sore; his fingers hurt a little bit as he moved them about, searching for something. After a few moments, the pain subsided, and he seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for. Breathing hard, he put his wet fingers in his mouth and sucked them clean, and then reached back down between their bodies.

Wincing, Rey wriggled her hips as he pressed into her in earnest. Her breath hitched as she watched the strange progression of his cock into her body, her chin resting on her sternum. When it hilted, his red-flushed chest was all she could see. She memorized the odd marks and freckles on it as he moved above her, the muscles in his arms straining.

It would be unnatural for her to sit astride him like a horse. A man should lie atop a woman, the Church cautioned. The Church forbade fornication, too, and that was what they were doing. Still, she couldn’t quell the rush of heat in her belly when she imagined him obeying her, lying on his back for her, looking up at her with dark, lustful eyes.

Rey was not used to there being so many people around. It was impossible to be unaware of them – she heard them through the open window, through the thin walls. She knew they could hear her, too – the shifting straw of the mattress, her little whimpers and wails, Ben’s grunts, the slap of his skin against hers as he set himself to the task of making love to her.

She clamped her hand over her mouth. Her teeth drew blood from her palm as he thrust harder, gritting his teeth. He looked like a feral animal in rut. The bone at the base of his belly collided sharply with the top of her sex. She expected that to hurt, but it didn’t. She made a strangled noise against her palm.

Startled, the baron lifted his head. A brief, teasing smile crossed his face, and he grasped at her thigh, crooking it up so he could grind against her again and again, his hips rotating and pummeling hers. _That_ hurt, but in an ecstatic, breathless way. She wasn’t any more religious than social mores dictated she should be, but in that moment she felt close to God.

Ben must have had a similarly quasi-religious experience. He bit into the web of skin and muscle between her shoulder and her neck, thrust so hard that her teeth clacked, and moaned like a whore against the bruise he’d left, his hips jerking. “Mother of _God_.”

***

After they’d coupled, it felt oddly intimate to lie naked next to each other. Rey was reminded of swimming in the river together as children, splashing in the calm waters and sprawling out on the warm rocks. Bare and innocent, their wet skins had dried in the sun.

Now, his warm, white spend was trickling out from between her legs and drying on her thighs.

“You should not have…” Rey didn’t know the word for what he’d done. She knew his back had arched like it might break and his face had contorted in agony. She’d felt a rush of heat in her abdomen, heat as hot as that of her shameful arousal, but foreign to her body. “You could beget a child.”

Ben laughed, his breath coming in great heaving gasps. “I am a baron. It is my duty to beget sons.”

“Sons, not bastards.”

Ben shrugged, running a hand down his sweat-slick chest. “Bastards are sons just the same. William the Bastard conquered England.”

Rey frowned at him, drawing the blankets up around her body. They were rough and heavy – warm, but not luxurious. “What if I gave you a daughter?”

Ben laughed again, amused by her contrariness. He rolled over, tackling her to the bed with a playful, low growl. His teeth nipped at the base of her throat. “Then I will keep you in naked and on your back until you give me a son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annulment was a tricky thing in the medieval ages. Outright divorce was a non-starter, but a marriage could be annuled, with permission from an Archbiship or the Pope, on certain grounds. Impotence was grounds for an annulment, but a doctor would have to examine the man in question to be sure he truly was impotent, and approval would have to come from on high. 
> 
> On the other hand, a marriage could be declared void from the outset - that is, it was treated as if it never took place at all - if the husband and wife were relatives or if there was no true consent to marriage. It would have been quite difficult for a woman to assert those grounds, but Rey has a little help from the baron and an understanding priest. 
> 
> York was a large medieval city, but by our standards it would be small, dirty, and crowded. The guildsman - you might recognize him as Chewbacca - was a serf. Han gave him as freedom in gratitude for military service. That was not totally uncommon. Freedom from serfdom could also be bought and paid for. 
> 
> The dirty poem Ben recites is from the Exeter Book, a 10th century book of poetry - some of it quite naughty. 
> 
> It was considered unnatural for a woman to be on top during sex - mostly because women were supposed to submit to men. Rey isn't particularly good at submitting, and Ben likes that about her.
> 
> William the Bastard is better known as William the Conqueror. It is a common misconception that bastards were shunned. Often they were publically embraced by their fathers, becoming members of the clergy elite or judges or merchants. If a lord lacked any sons born in wedlock - that is if he only had a bastard son - he might even name the bastard his legal heir. Even if he and his wife had daughters! There was a clear preference for sons, even illegitimate ones. As a baron, Ben would feel perfectly entitled to "spread his wild oats" and make as many babies as possible. I think Henry IV had something like thirty-six publically acknowledged bastard children, several of them the product of a long-standing relationship with a mistress. 
> 
> And finally, yes, Ben is an ass by modern standards. He wants to have his cake and eat it - he wants what he wants and expects to get it because he is a baron, but he also is very fond of Rey and respects her to a certain extent because of their childhood friendship.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey never sat still while the sun was in the sky. She’d worked all of her life. She’d had to, to earn her keep at Unkar Plutt’s house. It was odd to sit in her little garret room and not work. She supposed she earned her keep another way, now – she’d earned it twice before the baron had dressed in his many dark layers, kissed her forehead in an almost paternal way, and stomped down the creaky wooden steps.

When her boredom – a novel thing – got to be too much, Rey descended the narrow steps herself, clinging to the wall. She’d grown up in a wattle and daub house, hunkered low to the ground. The height of this house was _terrifying._

A wizened old woman intercepted her halfway down the flight of stairs. When Rey came level with her, she saw how small the woman was. “Are you the guildsman’s wife?”

“Yes.” The woman looked her up and down. “Are you the young baron’s mistress?”

Rey hadn’t heard that word out loud except from Ben. When he said it, it made her stomach burn pleasantly. Now, her cheeks burned with embarrassment. She couldn’t speak for a moment. Somehow, she’d thought that her shameful secret would remain just that: a secret.

Finally, she said, haltingly, “I’m called Rey.”

“Then that’s what I’ll call you. You can call me Maz.” The woman jerked her head to the side. “Come down to the kitchen. I expect you’re hungry.”

As she cut bread and cheese in the dim, smoky kitchen, Maz said, over her shoulder, “I’ve known Ben since he was knee-high.”

Rey choked, indignant. She had never heard anyone call him by his Christian name; it shocked her that this guildsman’s wife would use it. “Were you his nurse-maid?”

“No.” Maz set a wooden tray with bread and cheese down on the trundle table. “I’m too old for that, and too old to care about my reputation. That is why he brought you here.”

Rey had torn off a hunk of bread off, hunching over. Now, it turned to dust in her mouth. She hadn’t considered the guildsman’s reputation, or his wife’s. She’d only mourned her own. Living with a glorified whore in their house surely would tarnish their good name.

“Eat.” Maz gestured to the cheese.

Self-consciously, Rey did. She ducked her head. The cheese was far richer than she was accustomed to. She’d survived on gruel for much of her life.

“The old baron was never one to care much about what people thought, either.” Maz said, after a while. “He married a bastard’s daughter. A rich bastard, but a bastard.” 

Rey swallowed, painfully. Her throat was very dry. “Did he give you your freedom, too?”

“No.” Maz said, matter-of-factly. “I bought it.”

Rey blinked, setting down her bread. Curiosity and hope flared in her chest, though she had no money to speak of. “How?”

Maz didn’t directly answer her question. “You seem as if you’d want to be useful. You can make yourself useful here or down in the forge.”

“In the shop?” Rey drew her brows together. “Surely that isn’t – ”

“You don’t care whether it’s proper, do you?” Maz interrupted her, her voice thick with implication.

Rey shut her mouth abruptly. She supposed she didn’t. Nothing else about her was proper – she was an unmarried woman, living alone, going to bed with a baron.

***

Rey learnt how to be useful. She ran errands for Maz – getting lost in the maze that was York’s muddy streets – laden with bolts of fabric, eggs, fish, and flour. She swept the shop and heated the forge for the guildsman – a silent, strange man who was kind to her but rarely spoke. He had an apprentice, a dark-skinned, kind boy who didn’t seem to know why she lived in the attic of the house.

Every night, before she went to bed – whether with the baron or alone – Rey took a piece of flint and scratched a little mark into the wooden post supporting the plaster wall in her attic room. She used the marks to tally the days. She didn’t trust herself to keep track of them on her fingers or in her head, being uneducated. When the marks tallied three-hundred and sixty-five and one, she would have her freedom.

The baron appeared intermittently – sweaty and disheveled from riding and lustful from his absence – and reminded her that she was useful for more than just sweeping and tinkering and cooking. He came bearing gifts – a new dress, a pretty comb for her hair, sweets –  and made love to her twice or thrice as if he was determined to get her heavy with his child. Afterwards, she hobbled carefully around the forge, wincing every time she took too long a step.

***

When her scratch marks totaled twenty-six, Ben came calling. He found her in the shop, trying to stoke the fire in the forge for the guildsman.

“What are you doing?” He asked, leaning on the timber doorframe and crossing his arms over his chest.

“Learning a trade.” Rey explained, wiping sweat off her lip. She was embarrassed by her dirty face and burnt apron. She wasn’t wearing the new kirtle he’d bought her. He looked at her body appreciatively, anyways.

He scoffed, though, at the idea of her learning a skilled trade. He did, after all, pay for her to be kept and fed. “You have no need of that.”

“I don’t intend to trade in my body forever.” Rey said, too sharply. She gripped the poker as if she might brandish it like a sword. He didn’t seem threatened.

“I have never called you a whore, _mistress_.” Ben told her, mildly, as he stripped off his riding gloves. “Come upstairs and sup with me.”

***

“Are you going to sit on the bed?” Ben asked, taking a bite of the apple he’d sliced up with his hunting knife. He sat in the only chair, their supper spread out on the three-legged stool next to him.

“Isn’t that where you like me best?” Rey asked, boldly. She’d grown bold in twenty-six days. It didn’t hurt when she spread her legs for him anymore. She did it readily now.

He grinned, wolfishly. Booted and clad in black, his legs seemed to stretch the width of her little room. He patted his thigh and crooked his finger at her.

Rey perched, nervously, on his broad leg. She’d never sat on her father’s knee. Unkar had been the closest thing she’d had to a father, and he’d only ever touched her with lecherous intentions. The baron had lecherous intentions, too. He wrapped his arm around her waist and shifted her deeper into his lap. His cock was hard under her bottom. She knew what that meant. Her breath hitched.

Unhurried, he lifted a piece of chicken to her lips. She chewed it, slowly, and he lifted another piece. She felt like an infant, or an invalid. There was something strangely comforting about being taken care of as if she couldn’t take care of herself. She sagged into his chest, and he began to recount, as he often did, the tribulations and trials of the peasants scattered around the manor.

He did not tell her what became of Unkar Plutt. She did not ask. Wedge and Fett had a dispute which needed to be settled. Neither were happy with the resolution. Pava’s daughter wanted to marry Dameron. The winter’s supply of grain and smoked meat was low. Lando hadn’t paid his taxes.

“What do you think I should do to him?” Ben asked, good-humoredly, when she finished eating her supper.

“You should be merciful, my lord.” Rey said, before she realized that he was joking. “But levy a surcharge. That will increase your stock for the winter. As for Wedge and Fett, I expect they’ll work it out because Wedge trades his eggs for Fett’s milk. And you ought to give Dameron leave to marry Pava’s daughter. She’s been sweet on him for years.”

Ben’s brows rose with surprise. “Clever little Rey. Perhaps you should be the baron, since the boring work of running a barony fascinates you and _I_ would just as soon be in bed with you all the time.”

Rey flushed with pleasure. The guildsman praised her gruffly and Maz praised her curtly, but when Ben praised her, she felt it in her belly and chest. It made her feel warm. She clasped her hands around his neck and leaned her forehead into his chest. His cloak smelled like mud and rain. She wondered if his skin smelled the same. She wondered if it tasted like wind and hard riding. The thought of him hurrying across the rain-soaked countryside to her bed made her wet between her thighs.

She bit into the meat of her own lip and looked at him through her lashes, stroking the curve of his ear with her longest finger. She was hardly a seductress, but she knew how to seduce _him_. She knew him intimately; as a boy and as a man. “Carry me to bed, then, my lord.”

In one rough, jerky movement, the baron stood, steadying her in his arms. He was grinning but his eyes were dark and lustful. He moistened his mouth with his pink tongue. “Tomorrow, you must call me Ben again. But tonight, call me _that_.”

***

The marks Rey made on the timber post served another purpose. When she bled from between her legs, she made a crook at the top of that day’s tally mark. Twenty-four days passed between crooked scratch marks. All total, she had been in York for thirty-nine days. She wasn’t with child.

She was still bleeding when the baron came prowling around, bright-eyed. He didn’t talk of taxes or take his supper with her. He seemed intent on taking something else. He started unlacing her kirtle, admiring, for a moment, the clean, sturdy fabric of her new shift.

“You cannot make love to me tonight.” Rey pulled her laces from him, winding them around her own fingers for safekeeping. Those words – _make love_ – would have made her blush thirty-nine days ago. She felt very old and experienced.

Ben’s mouth set in a child’s pout. “What do I keep you here for, then?”

“The pleasure of my company?”

Ben reached around her waist and palmed her rump, making her squeal. His hand sunk into the flesh of it, a little too hard. His voice took on a wheedling tone, like a haggling fish-monger’s. “You are denying me my pleasure.”

“My wit?”

“If you had your wits about you you’d give me what I want.” Ben tugged her closer, his hand still gripping one globe of her backside. He mouthed hungrily at her neck, his teeth very sharp.

Rey squirmed, helplessly. Her stomach was suddenly very taut, the unpleasant roiling in it melting away with the heat of his body against hers. “It would be unclean.”

 Ben paused in his damp assault of her throat. His hand skirted around her hips and pressed against the flat of her belly. He rested his forehead on her collarbone, looking down at her abdomen. His meaning was clear; Rey realized hers had not been. There were many reasons physical congress could be unclean.  

“I am bleeding.” Rey knew of no other way to say it.

Ben straightened up to his full height and Rey suddenly felt like a child being chided. “You aren’t giving me a son, then?”

“No.” Rey rearranged her skirts, flushing. She’d been relieved when she’d crooked the scratch mark in the timber post two days prior. Now she wondered whether she shouldn’t have been.

Ben chewed his lip. He seemed disappointed. At first, she thought he was disappointed because they hadn’t produced a bastard despite nearly two months of fornication. Then, he said, crossly, “I rode all the way here.”

Rey frowned. She was unafraid to speak her mind to him, now. He seemed willing enough to listen to her when it came to taxes and crops; let him listen to her lecture him on theology and morality. “The Church – ”

Very bluntly – as if he wasn’t aware that was he was suggesting was the worst type of fornication and blasphemy – Ben interrupted her, “You could suck my cock.”

Rey stared, shocked. That was the worst kind of sodomy. He was an impious blasphemer. He put his mouth in between her legs. She was always scandalized, both by the sinful act itself, and by her reaction to it. She’d wail and buck as he licked her, covering her mouth with her hand and hoping God couldn't hear her debauched cries. 

She told herself that she was equally scandalized by the idea of taking his member in her mouth, that _that_ was why a heady shiver ran down her spine.  “You would have me debase myself – ”

“I have debased myself for love of you.” Ben responded, heatedly. 

He did, every time he lay between her thighs and took his dinner with her. He did when he read to her by the fire, stroking her hair until she was sleepy. He did when he carried her to bed and slept beside her, rather than leaving her to sleep alone like a prostitute. He did when he talked of bastards, fondly and with hope, his hand rubbing the naked skin of her belly. Rather than woo a highborn woman, he sought her out and wooed her with kisses and smiles and gifts. He didn’t need to. She would have submitted to him either way. Yet he did. 

Rey wavered for a moment and then sank onto the floor. He was a baron, but she didn’t go to her knees to show deference to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A guildsman would never have taken a female apprentice. Chewie and Maz are quite unconventional. So, as Rey discovers in this chapter, was Ben's father. 
> 
> Ben's responsibilities would include collecting taxes, paying taxes to the King, stockpiling food, settling disputes, granting permission to marry, punishing crimes, and maintaining a military force. He would have been a busy guy! Of course, his duties would also include entering an advantageous marriage and making an heir and a spare (or six...). 
> 
> It was considered unclean to have sex with a woman who was nursing, menustrating, or pregnant. I'm sure that didn't stop people. It was considered sodomy to have oral sex. Again... prooooobably didn't stop people. 
> 
> Even a noble woman's opinion would hardly have been valued in matters of business or politics. For Ben to consult with Rey implies that he thinks quite highly of her. He certainly wants more than just sex. He wants companionship and affection. The question is, is Rey coming around or is she just playing the game?
> 
> P.S. Go check out Days to Remember by maq_moon and Across Six Septembers by bluetoast. You won't regret it.


	7. Chapter 7

The baron arrived in York with a clatter and more fanfare than usual on St. Crispin’s Day. He never slunk upstairs, but he didn’t ordinarily bother exchanging salutations with the guildsman before he had his way with his mistress, either. He was a single-minded man.

Now, silhouetted against the mid-morning haze, Ben slapped his gloves against his thigh to get the road’s dust off them. It was a feast day; he ought to have been at Mass or benevolently overseeing a play intended to frighten children and educate adults, not riding. “My horse threw a shoe.”

The guildsman grunted. He picked up an iron bar and poked the hot forge, experimentally. Satisfied, he set it in the coals and waited for it to glow, crossing his massive arms over his chest. He uttered rare words, reproachfully. “It is a day of rest.”

“I can do it.” Rey heard herself say.

Ben’s eyes flickered over to her; he hadn’t recognized her in her heavy, stained apron. His lips twitched. “I thought you were afraid of horses, little Rey.”

Rey tilted her chin up. “I’m not.”

It was a lie. Making the shoe was simple enough – she curved the piece of iron into a pleasing crescent with the tongs, hammered it flat, and dunked it into the bucket of cold water with a _hiss_. Her face was red and sweaty from the heat of the forge by the time she turned and squared her shoulders, determined to face the great beast. Ben watched her, amused, thick arms crossed over his chest.

The massive warhorse had stood docile behind the baron, but it flinched and shifted its weight on its legs as she approached it. It lifted its tree-sized hind leg, crooking it and making a nervous noise. Despite herself, Rey side-stepped. The baron roared with laughter. That only made her more determined.

Struggling under the weight of the horse’s leg, Rey ducked down, facing its hindquarters. She hoisted the hoof up onto her thigh and compared her warm iron loop to the shape of the horse’s bare hoof. It was nearly the right size; she fumbled with the file, sweat dripping onto the horse’s hoof.

When the shoe was hammered to the horse’s hoof, Rey straightened up and patted its flank gratefully. She hadn’t gotten kicked or stomped or bitten. The horse nickered and stomped; she withdrew her hand as if she’d been burned.

Ben grinned. His eyes crinkled up at the corners. “Since you are so brave, come riding with me.”

***

No one toiled in the fields that stretched for miles around the walled city. St. Crispin’s Day was a holy day of obligation; even the poorest of the poor would hear Mass and crane their necks to see the parade of pageantry in the streets.

Ben let the beleaguered horse graze in a copse of trees.

“It is a day of rest.” He tugged her down into the soft grass. “Rest with me.”

They lay in the cool, damp grass together. His surcoat was black; her dress was stained with ash and soot. She didn’t care if it the back of it was stained green. Maz and the guildsman knew perfectly well that she lay down for him and she’d rather lay down in a field than a rickety bed. Out in the fields, no one save the horses and cows could hear her moan and whimper.

Ben crooked his arm behind his head, looking, for all his expensive clothes and pallor, like a shepherd sneaking away to sleep in the pasture. Rey curled into his side and touched his face, imagining, for a moment, that he was a shepherd. They might have been sweethearts – truly sweethearts, not just childhood sweethearts.

His nose was odd and large, cutting into the blue sky from her perspective. She traced the bridge of it, and his cheeks darkened. As a boy, he’d always been self-conscious of his nose and ears.

Ben kissed her fingers chastely, and then drew them, one by one, into his mouth. His spit was warm. His tongue circled the callouses she was developing. If he minded them – minded that she wasn’t a lady and couldn’t even pretend to be – he didn’t say. He unlaced her bodice easily. He didn’t fumble with her laces. He was practiced. They had done this, it seemed a hundred times – never, though, like _this._

Ben turned her onto her belly and tucked his hands under her hips, lifting them and pressing his groin to her backside. Even through her skirts and his surcoat, she felt his cock nudge between her thighs. Her face was aflame. “We cannot – ”

“This is how horses and cows do it.” Ben was lifting her skirts, sitting back on his haunches. She could have crawled away or rolled over, but she didn’t. She trembled as the cool air met her skin. “Why shouldn’t we, out here in the fields?”

Rey shook her head back and forth, listening to the creak of his leather laces. His member slid between her thighs, catching on the folds of lose skin there. His knees wedged between hers, pushing her legs further apart. As her hips stretched open, her eyes watered. Her objected was a familiar refrain; it was not an objection to the pain. It was an objection to the position he’d put her in. This position – _a tergo_ – was explicitly forbidden. “The church – ”

“The church says that a woman should submit to her husband. Are you not submitting to me in this?” Ben’s challenge was breathy, not brazen. He was, she realized, as shocked by his own sinfulness as she was.

“You are not my husband.” Rey dug her nails into the dirt as his body dug into hers, gracelessly. She knew he had never done this either, then. He wasn’t quite sure how to do it. His hands gripped the bunched folds of her dress and he began to move in her, drawing her back and forth by her skirts as he thrust into her.

Ben was not her husband, but there was no denying that he knew her body as well as a husband would – better, even. A husband would fuck her out of a sense of duty. Ben fucked her because he liked her orneriness, her impropriety, her wild hair, her sharp tongue. He fucked her and made love to her in turn, but it was never out of a sense of duty. If anything, it was _despite_ his sense of duty.

One of the baron’s heavy hands settled onto the nape of her neck, pressing her cheek into the ground. The grass tickled her nose and cheek. It smelled very clean – not like soap, but like earth and rain and growing things. York smelled like mud and sweat. She’d missed the smell of the fields. Even this did not feel sinful or sordid, out in the fields.

His cock felt heavy in her belly every time he hilted himself inside. The steady _slap_ of his thighs against her buttocks made her blush, and she was glad her face was pressed into the grass. When her mouth opened and rounded in a wordlessly sigh, she _tasted_ the grass.

It was a habit to stifle her cries in the mattress or into the meat of Ben’s shoulder. Ben did not – he grunted and huffed and groaned with abandon whenever they made love. He had no shame. _She_ did. The grass didn’t muffle the shameful keen of pleasure that she needn’t have been worried about anyone overhearing. The birdsong of her orgasm spurred Ben on; it made the nearby horse whicker and stomp his foot.

The hand that had been holding her down curled into her hair, mussing up her braid. Her scalp strained, her back arched, Ben made a low, guttural noise, and then it was quiet once more. He collapsed onto the grass next to her, sending up a little cloud of pollen and dust from the wildflowers.

“I haven’t smelled the grass in so long.” Rey said, finally. The sky above her was very blue and clear. She rolled onto her back, not bothering to tug her skirts down modestly. There was no one around and she liked the feeling of the cool air on her wet, abused sex and damp thighs. Her limbs felt weak and loose, like a newborn calf's. 

“You must know I will never suffer you to have another husband.” Ben said, soberly, as if he hadn’t heard her, and as if the sky wasn’t blue. His voice was cloudy and dark.

“I will not suffer a husband.” She was free of Unkar Plutt by the grace of God – or by the grace of Ben’s jealousy and cruelty – and she did not intend to be bound to another brute. She intended to be free.

Ben chuckled darkly. “To suffer – what an apt word for wedlock.”

“What do you mean?”

“My betrothed looks like – ” Ben looked around. His gaze settled on the war horse grazing nearby, unbothered by their antics. “A horse.”

For a moment, Rey thought that he was joking. “Your… your betrothed?”

Ben reached down and tucked his soft cock back into his hose, lacing himself up. Now, he fumbled. “I thought you knew.”

Rey blinked. Her ears were burning. For some reason, she felt embarrassed. All she knew of Alderaan, she knew from Ben. He told her what crops were being planted and harvested, who was marrying who, who was pregnant by who, who had died, who had gotten arrested for poaching. He told her nothing of importance, it seemed. “How – how could I know?”

“It is my duty.” Ben said. He stared up at the clouds. His jaw had a stubborn set to it.

Rey felt her gut twist. _It is my duty,_ he’d told her, _to beget sons._

 _Not bastards_ , she’d told him, reproachfully.

He had found – or rather, his mother had found for him – a woman with which to beget sons. For all his talk of bastards and words of love, he would marry this woman, even if she looked like a horse. Even if he did not love her or like her. Her breath hitched in her chest.

Of course she had known. She had always known. He was a baron. She had no right to be angry – to yell or to stomp her foot. She had no claim to him. He had no claim to her, either – at least he wouldn’t, after a year and a day.

Scrambling to her feet, Rey yanked her skirts down and ran towards the meandering horse. She did not know how to ride – she was afraid of horses – but she threw herself onto the horse’s back, nonetheless, grappling at the saddle.

Ben yanked her backwards as the horse shied and whinnied.

“Let me go!” Rey shrieked, struggling in the circle of his arms. She flailed at his chest, helplessly. “Let me go!”

“I will not let you go!” Ben bellowed. His hair was wild. His mouth hung open. “I’ll suffer her, but I’ll _rejoice_ in you.”

Rey broke free of him and began to run. Her heart thudded under her ribcage. Her feet sunk in the wet grass as she stumbled along, tripping over her hem. She wondered if he would ride her down the way he’d ridden Plutt down. She wondered if he would scream at her that she was _his_ , that he would keep her for himself, that it was his _right_ to have her and a wife if he wanted both.

The ground shook with hoofbeats, but they receded. Ben did not follow her. He rode away from the walled city of York, towards Alderaan; she ran towards the towering stone walls of her prison and, now, her hell.

***

What Rey liked best and least about York was how many people lived there. She hated the crush of them all. She liked being anonymous.

Strangers stared at her as she ran through the streets, her cheeks tearstained and her skirts grass-stained. She found her way to the towering cathedral, and the tall, narrow house beside it. She fell twice as she mounted the narrow, rickety stairs.

Blinded by her tears, Rey counted the scratch marks on the timber post in her garret room. She sniffed, wiping her mucus and weakness off her cheeks with the back of her hand. _Thirty._ She balled her fist, and her nails dug into her palm.

Rey had never been able to imagine Ben taking a wife. She told herself it was because she still thought of him as an impish little boy, not as a man of marriageable age and certain wealth. Now, she realized that she could not bear to imagine his wife – was she tall? Sturdy? Delicate? Sweet? – because she, by rights, should be his wife. If he hadn’t been born and baron and she hadn’t been born a bastard, she would be his wife. _Sixty._

The words _my betrothed_ had cut like a knife. She could not bear to hear the words _my wife_ or _my son_. No – no, she could bear it a little while longer. She _must_. She would have her freedom if she could bear this awful pain until a year and a day had passed. Then she would be free of the baron and of this heartache.

The thought should have made her heart leap; instead, it sunk into her belly. She wanted her freedom, but she did not want to be free _of_ him.

Rey counted aloud, now, her breath hitching pathetically. “Ninety. Ninety-one. Ninety-two. Ninety-three.”

Her throat constricted with a little gurgle. She sunk to her knees and counted the tallies with shaking fingers, sure she had made a mistake. She was not good at counting or adding numbers. Ben teased her when she tried to help him with his ledgers – _no_ , she could not think about his crooked smile. It caused a fresh wave of tears and self-loathing.

Rey counted a third time, using her fingers.  

She hadn’t crooked the top of a scratch mark in thirty-two days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ducks rotten fruit* 
> 
> A baron or the like would typically be betrothed at a young age; Ben is long overdue for an engagement. He would likely not have met his intended or picked her out for himself. His parents would have negotiated the marriage with her parents.
> 
> Feast days were of great importance in medieval Europe. No one worked, including guildsmen and serfs. Instead, there were pagents and religious ceremonies. 
> 
> It's easy to think of Rey as fearless, but she would never have ridden a horse (save those times that Ben unceremoniously threw her on the back of one). 
> 
> P.S. You may have noticed that this story is updated much less frequently than In Short Order. It is pretty slow going - there are a lot of moving pieces and details that I want to get just right. That said, your encouragement and feedback mean the absolute world to me!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: mention of miscarriage

Rey kept her terrible secret from the baron. He did not come to York, either to take her to bed or to reprimand her. She could not keep the secret from Maz. The guildsman’s wife watched her, beady-eyed, as she picked at her gruel in the morning and her cheese and smoked meat in the evening. She followed her out into the street and stood, hands on her narrow hips, watching her vomit.

Strangers in the square skirted her, warily, as the meagre contents of her stomach joined the river of filth and garbage in the gutter. They thought her sick, and perhaps contagious.

Humiliated, Rep wiped her mouth on the edge of her kirtle, bent double. Her salty tears mingled with the taste of vomit in her mouth.

Maz clicked her tongue, disapprovingly. “ _Si nom caste tamen caute.”_

Rey felt her stomach turn – whether from guilt or the scent of trash and muck, she didn’t know. She couldn’t speak French like Ben could, but understood enough Latin from years of dutiful attendance at Mass to know what Maz had said to her – _if not chastely, at least cautiously_.

“You haven’t been cautious or chaste, have you?” The guildsman’s wife asked, shrewdly. Rey began to cry, standing in the street amongst her own sick. Ever the pragmatist, Maz tutted, “Don’t cry. A baron’s bastard won’t starve.”

Rey knew her child would not starve; nor would she. Ben would be enamored with her belly as it burgeoned and with their babe when she birthed it. He would lavish the child with gifts and bounce it on his lap. He would be grateful to her for giving him the son he wanted so badly. She thought he would even be grateful for a daughter.

No, the babe would not starve. He would be well fed. The baron would make sure of it, and then he would go home to his lawful wife and make sure her womb was fruitful, too. It wasn’t starvation Rey would die of; it was a broken heart.

“Children are a blessing.” Maz said, sounding almost reproachful.

Rey sniffed, wiping the back of her nose with her hand. Bitterly, she said, “Then the Lord has blessed me richly, indeed.”

“Some women are not so blessed.” Maz reprimanded her. Rey looked up, sharply. “I lost four babes.”

“Oh.” Rey said, lamely. She suddenly felt a little ashamed of herself. This was the way of the world, after all – she’d known how babies were made and she’d known the baron could and would never marry her if they made one. She had let him woo her into bed nonetheless. “Why?”

What she meant was _how_.

***

Maz’s first pregnancy had ended in a sudden and violent fever. The next three had ended for no reason at all – some, in a rush of blood, some in a stillbirth. Perhaps she had been too old. Maz told her this, unemotionally, watching her sip a bowl of salty bone broth. It settled uneasily in Rey’s stomach, but she didn’t vomit again.

“Some women’s husbands beat them, and they miscarry that way.” Maz said, after a long silence. The fire crackled ominously.

“Ben would never beat me.” Rey said, begrudgingly. He _was_ rough, but never in a way that didn’t make her skin prickle and her breath short.

“You might fall down the stairs.” Maz went on, as if she hadn’t heard Rey defend the baron. “Or off a horse.”

“Oh.” Rey blinked. She understood what Maz meant, now. She looked down at her vomit-stained skirts. They lay _almost_ flat over her belly. She hadn’t bled in forty-three days.

“You might drink pennyroyal tea.” Maz continued.

Rey squirmed on the trundle bench. A fall seemed like an accident. Drinking an abortifacient tea seemed like a crime. “Isn’t that a sin?”

Maz rolled her narrow shoulders. “Does a babe have a soul before it quickens?”

Rey thought about the boy Ben had been – big-eared, long-limbed, sweet and coltish. She had loved that boy, innocently and without reservation. Whatever soul the babe in her had, it was like _his_. “Yes.”

Maz exhaled, heavily. She seemed almost relieved. “Then I will pray for the little soul.”

“Maz.” Rey began, feeling inexplicably guilty. “I want to keep this a secret.”

Maz’s brow rose. “From the baron’s wife?”

Rey flinched. She _hated_ that word. “You know?”

“Everyone knows.” Maz said, plainly.

Rey winced. She felt like an utter fool. “The baron cannot know about the child.”

Maz frowned. Plenty of young women – marriageable women – concealed the fruit of illicit trysts under cloaks and the guise of visiting distant relatives for months on end. They did so to avoid dashing their prospects of an advantageous marriage. Rey had no such prospects and no good reputation to ruin. “To what end?”

Rey buried her face in her hands. “If he knows, he will never let me go.”

“Rey.” Maz touched the back of her hand. “He never intended to.”

“I cannot…” Rey choked on an unbidden, self-pitying sob. She peeked through her fingers. “I cannot be his mistress forever – his _whore_ – while he has a wife.”

Maz sucked in a deep breath, as if she suddenly understood Rey’s predicament. She cupped her cheek in a motherly way. “Child, to love is to suffer, and suffering is a woman’s lot in life.”

Rey swallowed hard. She humbled herself. “Will you help me?”

Maz seemed to consider it. After a long moment, she said, critically, “Hiding under heavy skirts will do no good if you let the Baron _under_ those skirts.”

Rey ducked her head. “I cannot refuse him.”

She _could_ , but he would wheedle and beg and begin to suspect. His hands would feel out the swelling of her abdomen and the tenderness of her breasts soon enough, even if she refused to take off her kirtle and lay down.

Maz chewed her lower lip, thoughtfully. “You could hide under a nun’s habit.”

***

The baron usually strode up the narrow stairs and into her room with long steps and a slight swagger. He was a man who knew what he wanted and knew he could have it.

He rode to York late at night, fifty days after Rey had last crooked a tally mark on her wall, and climbed slowly to her. Only the heaviness of his boots on the steps betrayed his identity.

Rey wrapped a blanket around her. She was clad only in a shift – she’d been asleep, or rather, trying to sleep. She braced herself for his headstrong, inevitable seduction. She was already half-undressed. That would make it harder to resist.

Ben approached her slowly. For the first time since he’d kept her tucked away in the garret room on the third floor, he didn’t take her in his arms or unfasten her hair from its braid. He didn’t tease her or order her to get on her back and spread her thighs for him. He didn’t seem to notice that she was wearing a thin shift and nothing else.

He looked very sober. “Forgive me.”

Rey forced herself to respond civilly. “There is nothing to forgive.”

“You love me.” Ben soldiered on. “I did not know that.”

Rey’s cheeks burned. She swaddled herself tighter in the blanket and tried to school her features. “I do not.”

Ben’s cheeks darkened. “If you love me – ”

“I have already said I do not.” Rey interrupted him, sharply. She surprised herself with her own impudence and vehemence. She did not want to admit that weakness to him. She wasn’t sure how he had discovered it – her tears? The way she had run from him? "To love is to suffer." 

“If you _love me_ ,” Ben said, forcefully, through a tight jaw, “I will end this betrothal. I will take no wife.”

Rey gawped at him. “You must have heirs.”

“I will name our son my heir.” Ben ran his hand over his hair. It was mussed from the wind. She had the strangest urge to smooth it down herself. She imagined playing with it as he laid his cheek against her belly.

She almost told him that he would have a son soon enough, God willing. Then, he went on. “I will disappoint my mother, break the contract that has been in place since my youth, pass on my title to a bastard, ruin my good name – ”

“Why?” Rey cried, _hating_ herself for how much she wanted him to make good on his promises.

“Because I love you.” Ben’s nostrils flared. “And yes, _to love is to suffer_. I will suffer all this for you.”

Rey choked slightly. She could feel his anger and frustration radiating off of him like heat from the sun. He resented her, she realized, for being low-born. He resented himself for loving her. She drew herself up to her full height. Trying to sound haughty, she said, “I will not beg.”

What she meant was, _she would not say she loved him._ That would be tantamount to begging him to shirk his duty to his family and his barony, to create a scandal by acknowledging a bastard child, and to create an enemy of his betrothed’s father.

Ben’s jaw twitched. She saw that he was humbling himself with great effort. “You need only ask.”

Rey shook her head, resolutely. “I will not ask that of you.”

Ben’s jaw worked side-to-side. His eyes were suspiciously wet. His voice was hoarse when he spoke. “What would you ask of me, then?”

“I said I would have no husband, and I will not.” Rey took a deep breath. “I do not want to _suffer_ any longer. I want to go to a nunnery.”

Shock registered briefly on her lover’s face. “A nunnery?”

“I want to take vows.” Rey said, stiffly.

Ben laughed, suddenly. He looked almost dazed. “You want to take vows?”

“Yes.” Rey felt a rush of bitterness. “I will never take marriage vows. I want to take religious vows.”

Ben’s cheeks darkened. His voice took on a dark, mocking lilt. “That is your vocation? To serve God?”

“Yes.” Rey lied.  

Ben cursed, under his breath. In his anger, he lashed out. “You serve _me_. Your _vocation_ has been taking my cock – ”

In a fit of shame and bravery, Rey slapped him across the face.

Astonished, Ben touched his cheek. His eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Rey worried that she had miscalculated. Perhaps he would beat her. It took a great deal of self-control not to wrap her arms around her midsection, instinctually protecting her belly.

In a low, dangerous voice, the baron said, “I offer you my – _everything_ , and this is how you repay me?”

“I would rather be a nun than a whore.” Rey said, her voice quivering. She knew that he could drag her back to Alderaan and keep her there. It was his prerogative. She would be bound to her plot of land and tormented by his wife. Perhaps their children would even play together, as she and Ben had.

“You were never my whore.” Ben snarled. “Can’t you see that?”

“I will never be your wife, either.” Rey said, before she could stop herself.

Ben’s mouth tightened into a flat line. His breath came in short, angry huffs. She got the sense that he was as angry with himself as he was with her. “You ask too much.”

Rey’s limbs trembled of their own accord, as if the wind blew past her. In reality, it was still and stifling hot in the garret room. She _did_ want to much. She wanted more than was due to a woman of her station. “That is why I will not ask.”

***

St. Michael’s Abbey housed women of religious fervor and women who were hiding from something. Some of them were meek, rich women who cared more for music and prayer than husbands and children – the second or third daughters in their family. Some were widows. Some, Rey heard whispers, had even had children within the convent’s stone walls.

Rey smoothed the harsh brown fabric of her initiate’s habit over her stomach. It was loosely belted. It hid, rather well, the swell of her lower belly. In the convent, no one touched her. No one could pull the fabric taut and see the curve of her body or the engorgement of her breasts.

In a few months time, Rey would birth the baby in her cell, on her narrow cot under a crucifix. Only God would be there to judge her. She might die in the effort, she knew. That would be just as well, as long as the baby lived.

She had decided that she would give the baby away. She would not abandon it – she could not do that – to fend for itself, as she had. She knew full well that would ensure the child would have as miserable a life as she had.

The convent was no place for a child. She would be cast out if she kept one. So, in the dead of night, she would give the baby to Maz – Maz, who had lost so many babies of her own. Maz would care for the child. Rey would take her vows – absolve herself of her sins – and live a life of solitude.

Solitude, she told herself, was a vocation in and of itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE PINING.
> 
> What Maz says to Rey - if not chastely, then with caution - was reference to contraceptive methods. They weren't reliable (peeing after sex, wiggling around, certain positions, wearing amulets...). Abortion was equally unreliable.
> 
> Quickening refers to the child's first discernable movements in utero, at around 20 weeks. Until quickening, a pregnancy was not considered legitimate and a fetus wasn't really considered to be a person or have a soul. 
> 
> It was common for woman (usually, wealthy women) to hide a pregnancy behind their clothes and pretend they were ill. This would ensure they could still marry well. Rey would not marry well in any case; she has no need to keep a pregnancy secret.
> 
> Maz helps Rey keep the pregnancy a secret from Ben so that she can have her freedom. Many women found such freedom in convents - there they could make art, become learned, and live independently of a man. It would not be such a terrible fate for Rey to join a convent - if she didn't fervantly love Ben, of course. It remains to be seen whether she'll fervantly love their child, too.
> 
> Finally, Ben seems like an asshole (okay, he is an asshole!) but context is important. He cannot fathom marrying Rey. It would ruin his family name. Rey is unwilling to ask him to do that, because she cares for him.
> 
> His offer to remain unmarried, acknowledge her as his mistress, and embrace their children publically should be seen as a *hugely* romantic gesture. Engagement was a contract. Breaking off an engagement was nearly impossible and very scandelous. So was remaining unmarried, even though, as noted before, naming a bastard as an heir was an accepted practice.


	9. Chapter 9

The Book of Hours dictated the rythmn of Rey;s life. Matins was the darkest of the divine offices; it came in the middle of the night with the ringing of bells. More often than not, Rey was already awake when she heard the bells. She slept fitfully on her narrow pallet in her solitary cell. The babe in her bid her toss and turn and sweat. Even when it settled, she could not sleep for fear of dreaming.

Lauds rang out just before the rising sun. It was blessedly early; Rey never felt light-headed and weak during prayers. During Prime, an hour later, she did. She usually ran, swearing under her breath, having been preoccupied in the gardens or laundry, to Terce. She was ravenous as Sext was said, exhausted during Nones, and asleep on her feet during Vespers.

After Compline, Rey was – finally – alone. Between Matins and Compline, she dared not touch her belly or complain about her arduous work for fear of being found out. In her cell, she stripped off her novice’s habit and wished for a polished piece of glass. Such vanities were forbidden to nuns.

Manuscripts and books were not forbidden. Outside of St. Michael’s Abbey, they were the indulgences of rich men. Within its stone walls, they were laid bare before Rey. She devoured them without knowing what the ink-scratches on them meant. She labored practicing writing letters and sounding them out-loud. Spinning and playing a lute bored her – so did religious life – but  _learning_  did not.

When the novice Rose knocked on the door of her little room, Rey wondered, for a moment, whether she had been trying so hard to read – squinting at a pilfered scrap of parchment – that she had neglected the bells. She was not a diligent initiate. She knew that did not bode well if she was to be a nun.

“You’re needed in the chapel.” Rose told her, wide-eyed.

Rey’s heart sunk. The chapel was the domain of the priest. Women came to the abbey to be free of men, but that one man was indispensable to religious life. He heard confession and gave communion. He said Mass. Otherwise, he was a solitary man. He was surrounded by women who had taken or wished to take vows, and he had taken vows of his own. He would never deign to summon any woman, let alone an initiate or a novice, for anything other than confession.  

Rey wondered if he had discovered her many sins – adultery, fornication, lying by omission – and wanted her to confess to them. Perhaps someone had seen her vomiting behind the herb gardens, or turning her nose up at stew and gruel. Maybe she had inadvertently fondled the swell of her stomach during prayers.

She trudged to the chapel with a heavy belly and heavier feet.  

***

“Father?” Rey’s voice echoed in the empty church. Between Masses and divine offices, it was cold and dark. The empty pews looked to her like rows of coffins. She sat in one, exhaling heavily.

It was impious to sit, rather than kneel. But it seemed she was alone, and the stone floors under the pews had bruised her knees many a morning. There was no one to scold her for not taking to her knees. Sitting instead of kneeling was the smallest of her sins. When the priest came to cast her out of the abbey, she would atone for it, too.

Jesus, etched onto the crucifix, frowned down at her.

The door to the chapel closed with a thud, and heavy footsteps thudded on the flagstone. Rey bowed her head, as if she was begging mercy. In truth, she was bracing herself.

The creak of wood reverberated through the chapel as someone sat in the pew behind her. Rey’s throat constricted. No nun or priest would sit, rather than kneel.

She turned, rising to her feet. Arms braced on the pew in front of him, the baron sat, dusty and mussed-haired. His face was upturned towards the crucifix – or towards her. His voice was a low rumble; sinful-sounding compared to the reverent hush of the nun’s voices and the priest’s drone. “I have come to pray.”

“To pray?” Rey repeated, faintly. She wondered whether she was imagining him – though, if she was, she’d have imagined him less road-muddied.

Ben’s moistened his full lower lip. “For forgiveness.”

Rey looked around, desperately. She was suddenly afraid to be alone with him in this hallowed place. She was afraid that the priest would discover them. She was afraid of what she would do.

“Deus meus,” Ben began, slowly, closing his eyes. “Ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum poenas a Te iuste statutas promeritus sum, sed praesertim quia offendi Te, summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, adiuvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum. Amen.”

It was silent in the church.

“You are all good and deserving of all my love.” Ben opened his eyes. He repeated part of the prayer of contrition in English, rather than Latin. She knew he was speaking to her, not to God. “With the help of your grace, I confess my sins.”

“I cannot absolve you of your sins.” Rey whispered. Only a priest could do that.

Ben leaned back in the pew. His brow was pensive. “What penance would you have me do?”

Before she could stop herself, Rey blurted out, “Are you married?”

Ben’s throat bobbed. His voice was raspy. “I am not married.”

Rey nodded, slowly. She fingered the rope that belted her loose initiate’s robe. She tied it very loosely – loser and loser every day, it seemed. The babe in her belly had quickened; now, it seemed to leap and roll. “Are you –”

“Nor am I betrothed.” Ben stood. The bench groaned. His boots were loud on the stone floor as he wound through the pews. She wondered how she had not recognized their heft before; she’d heard him climb the stairs to her so many times. “I should pray for my mother’s forgiveness, but it’s yours I want.”

Rey’s throat closed for a moment. She could not pretend to be proud and cold. The thought of him marrying another – of sleeping in another woman’s warm bed while she slept in a cold, solitary cot – had brought her to tears on too many nights. She was indescribably grateful that he had been as heartbroken as she had been. His eyes were dark-ringed. He had not forgotten her or forsaken her. “You have it.”

Ben ducked his head towards hers. His breath was warm on her cheek. “I did not come only to pray.”

Rey closed her eyes, swaying on her feet. “What else did you come for?”

Ben’s mouth closed, hot and wet, on her neck. The indecent, suckling sound of his work there was brash in the silent chapel. Rey let out a soft, strangled noise of a relief. It  _was_  a relief to be touched. No one had touched her in months. She had taken his touch – the callouses of his palms, the slick of his tongue – for granted for so long. She was hungry for it now.

Ben chuckled against her skin, as if it amused him how ill-suited she was to a life of religious asceticism. “I came to worship.”

***  
They took unholy communion in her cell. Every other soul within the walls of the convent was at prayers; they were truly alone. Still, Rey whispered to him as he unfastened the fabric that covered her hair. She was irrationally afraid that someone – or some higher power – would overhear them, and she had never commanded him to get on his back before. He had always ordered  _her_ onto  _her_  back. “Lie down.”

Her cot was narrow and short. Ben laughed, throwing his head back. “Is this my penance?”

She had thought of often – riding astride him – but never done it. Men were supposed to lay atop women; women were supposed to be prostrate and submissive. He had come to her begging for forgiveness. She had a sinful, strong urge to see him prostrate beneath her. That, and she was sure that if she lay beneath him, he would feel the swell of her belly.

When Ben was laid out on the cot, stripped naked, it occurred to her that he looked like a sacrifice on an altar. It was odd to see a predatory creature lying docile. When she mounted him, Rey gathered her skirts up around her legs so she could see his cock. It strained towards her, finding its way inside her body as the robes settled around them, hiding them from the gaze of crucifix hung above her cot.

The simple wooden crucifix was the only ornamentation in her austere room. That was by design. Nuns were not supposed to have things of such beauty in their beds. Ben looked like an angel or a saint etched into a book. His hair splayed out around his face like a halo. As she eased onto his length, wincing at the pinch and stretch of penetration, he seemed beatified.

His hands stroked her bare calves, bunching the scratchy wool robe around her thighs. “I want to see you, sweeting.”

Rey shushed him with her mouth. She rocked, clumsily, over him. He felt different, inside her. She felt fuller, narrower. When he tried to thrust up into her, he nearly unseated her. The wet slap of their bodies together was arrhythmic and graceless. With a grunt, Ben gripped her hips and moved her hips in tandem with his.

Ben’s masculine noise of pleasure and satisfaction when she sunk deeper onto him strangled in his chest when his hands strayed from her hips to her abdomen. He suddenly lifted his head off her hard pillow. His mouth dropped open and his hips sunk down into the thin mattress. His hands fumbled at the scratchy wool of her initiate’s robe, pulling it taut around her belly.

Rey had been five months without her courses. Her belly poked out just past her breasts, rounded in a tell-tale way. She felt stupid, now, for thinking that she could hide it from him.

Ben’s face contorted for a moment. She thought it was rage that twisted his features. He reared up off of her cot and she thought he would buck her off of him and onto the cold floor in rage. He didn’t. He grasped the hem of her robe and yanked it over her head, tangling it in her hair.

Her belly jutted towards him. Her naked skin was stretched out and shiny, like a tanned hide. Cupping its breadth with both hands, Ben made a low, anguished noise. The bells tolled, marking the end of Terce.

“ _Mater dei_.” Ben said, sounding more reverent than he had as he’d recited prayers in the chapel.

Rey laughed, sagging with relief. “No, mother of a bastard.”

“Mother of my child.” Ben wrapped his arms around her, burying his face in her shoulder. His back heaved as he gulped in great, nervous breaths. He was still hard inside of her, and he was still worshipping her body, in a way, but his eyes were bright and wet when he looked up at her. “Mother of my son, God willing.”

Rey traced the dark circles under his eyes. For all that his words made her heart ache with happiness, her child – a son or not, an heir or not – would be a bastard. He had not been conceived in wedlock.

Perhaps, though, he  _had_ been conceived in love. Perhaps she had loved Ben as a boy, and as a baron, and in the garret room in York. She loved him now, in her dark cell at St. Michael’s.

Ben pressed his mouth to hers and bore her down onto the narrow cot, twining their limbs and moving against her with a tenderness that was foreign to him. For all that he was large and rough, he was gentle in this.

Terce was over; the sisters and novices would return to their lutes or harps, or books, or cooking, or wine-making. They would roam the sterile, dark halls of the dormitory. Someone might overhear her muffled moans of passion as Ben rubbed at the wet, soft flesh at the front of her sex, just inches from where he was buried inside her.

Rey cared not. Ben knew he had gotten a child on her; he coveted the child. He would not abandon her to the walls of the monastery or their child to be raised by another. She cried out when he coaxed her to ticklish ecstasy.

He looked at her in amazement when she did. In the garret room, she had always tried to be quiet and he had been bold and brash. His mouth parted, silently, as he spilled his seed in her. She did not protest or flinch; it could do no harm now.

She drew him against her breast, casting her eyes to the crucifix. “You cannot keep your mistress in a nunnery.”

Ben kissed each breast, as if marveling that they would feed a babe soon. He lifted his head, a look of utter contentment on his face. “I will not keep you as my mistress. I do not want a mistress in York or in a nunnery."

Rey’s fingers stilled in his sweaty, tangled hair. She had never anticipated this. He had begged and bargained to make her his mistress; she had been too proud to rejoice in that dubious honor, even if it meant she had his heart and soul.

Perhaps now that she was with child, he was satisfied that he had her under his thumb. He could do as he pleased with other women. Rey’s voice failed her. She envisioned herself destitute, with a starving, skinny baby. Then, she imagined something worse. Ben might take her child – his heir – and cast her out. 

"Please." It seemed she had no shame left. "Ben, please, do not take him from me."

“Sweeting.” Ben kissed the corner of her eye. A tear had gathered there. It moistened and salted his lip. “I want you for my wife."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See? Ben isn't hopeless!
> 
> ... of course, he's hopelessly impractical. Marrying an orphan commonor would be ruinious, socially and economically. I wonder how he's going to get away with it?
> 
> The Latin prayer he recites is the Act of Contrition. It is typically said during confession. When he discovers Rey's pregnancy, he says Mater Dei, which means Mother of God. He means it the same way we would - like, "holy shit!" 
> 
> On a personal note, I have been suffering a bit of a creative drought. I would be endlessly grateful for your encouragement and feedback on this chapter. It helps me enjoy writing and creating that much more to interact with you!!


	10. EPILOGUE

Alderaan had not changed. Rey felt that she had. The barony had always been hilly and green-pastured. It had always been dotted with jagged rocks and copses of wiry trees. The road to York had always cut through the fields like a golden snake.

Now that she’d trod that road, she was different. She’d never appreciated the beauty of the countryside because she was tethered to it.

She stood on the ridge at the fork in the road, looking towards her birthplace. Behind her, the baron’s voice was a low rumble that echoed the thunder over the distant hills. It would rain, soon. “Are you well, wife?”

“I am not your wife.” Rey chided Ben, as she had so many timed before. This time, she chided him in good humor.

Ben touched her cheek with two gloved fingers. “You are as good as my wife, if you promise me you will be.”

Rey looked back at the winding road. She knew where it led. He was right –  her word was as good as her deed. “I haven’t given you my answer.”

There was a pause. The wind picked up. It blew her hair into her face and mouth. She’d let it loose, reveling in her newfound freedom outside of the abbey walls. “Will you?”

“Will I give you my answer?”

“Will you be my wife?”

Rey looked around. They were in a lonely, wild place. She could see for miles. There was no one else around. Their promises, exchanged sincerely, would bind them forever, in God’s eyes. He was the ultimate witness to a wedding ceremony, even if it were not a ceremony at all. “We ought to have witnesses.”

Ben laughed. His eyes crinkled fondly. “I was betrothed to another not a fortnight ago, and you are heavy with child. We will be a scandal with or without witnesses.”

Rey ducked her head. She sniffled into the back of her hand, brushing her hair out of her face with her other hand. She’d ridden away with him on his great, frightful horse and flown across the countryside. She’d been born to this place on the wings of ecstasy. Now, she felt herself sink to the muddy earth from whence she'd come. “I – I would not do your good name any more harm than I must – ”

“My mother’s father was a bastard.” Ben interrupted her. “Marrying her made my father no less a baron. I have his name.”

“I am not just a bastard.” Rey managed. “I am – I am no one.”

Ben withdrew a folded piece of parchment from within his surcoat, his fingers moving stiffly and formally as he presented it to her.

“I cannot read well enough to make it out.” Rey said, stiffly. She was, as always, utterly self-conscious of her lack of education.

“We must remedy that.” Ben took the papers back, folding them carefully and tucking them into his surcoat. “You are a lady now.”

Rey snuffled wetly. “Even if I marry you, no one will think me a lady.”

“These are letters patent.” Ben interrupted her. “They confer a knighthood on a great friend of my father’s.”

“Who?”

The baron’s lips twitched, as if he was telling a private joke. Rey blinked. She wished she had poured over her parchment later into the night at the abbey, so she could read them properly. “He is an impoverished and feckless man. He promised me his long-lost daughter’s hand for a mere forty pounds if I could find her. She was cloistered in an abbey.”

Rey choked. “Forty pounds?”

“Under threat of violence.” Ben admitted. “A small price to pay for your hand.”

“ _My_ hand?” Rey looked down at her own palm. It was ink-stained and rough from hard labor and learning to use a blacksmith’s tools.

Ben took her hand. He smoothed it between his leather-clad fingers. “He can give you no dowry, no reputation, and no pedigree. But he can give you a name. Calrissian. You will not be a bastard.”

Rey looked down the road. She realized that what she had said was not quite true. She was not _no one_. She was someone. She was a student of blacksmithing and theology. She was a lover. She was going to be a mother.

She found she did not want to marry him under false pretenses. She wanted to marry him as she was. She wanted to marry the boy she had known and loved. 

“It would be a left-handed marriage, but I would have your hand.” Ben’s voice was thick. “No one would challenge the legitimacy of our marriage. My sanity, perhaps –”

When she didn’t smile at his little jest, Ben’s grip tightened nervously on her sweaty palm. “Will you be my wife, my lady Calrissian?”

Rey lifted his gloved hand and tugged the leather sheath off. She kissed his bare knuckles. “I will take his name, but take _me_ to be your wife.”

Ben’s face changed. He tugged off his other glove and tossed it onto the muddy road. He took her hands in both of his. “Rey, orphan, bastard, scamp, sweeting, erstwhile wife of a miller, baron’s mistress, blacksmith’s apprentice, initiate, mother of my children, best of women.”

Rey laughed, despite herself, covering her mouth with one hand. His grip on her other hand was firm, and she realized, scandal be damned, he would never let go of it. She squeezed his bare fingers.

Ben knelt on the wet ground, both his knees sinking into the mud. Her belly protruded towards him through the fabric of her kirtle. “Will you consent to be my lawful wife?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What? Epilogue? It's true! This story was actually only intended to be about 5 chapters, but I got carried away. My original outline, in fact, ended with Ben coming to the abbey and finding Rey in the church. I hope this is more satisfying.
> 
> There was some fascinating discussion in the comments, particularly in the last chapter, about Ben and Rey's dilemma. I recommend you go and read it! I know this is *not* historically accurate. But I wanted Ben to make a grand, noble gesture by marrying someone far below his station, and I wanted - needed? - a HEA. 
> 
> Ben procured Lando Calrissian's letters patent, which are the documents granting him a knighthood. A knight was low on the social totem pole, compared to a baron. What Ben means when he says that they will have a left-handed marriage is that Rey - posing as the daughter of an impoverished knight who was willing to take a bribe to pretend he had a long lost daughter he'd sent off to a nunnery - is of inferior birth to him. Their marriage is not dynastic; that is, it does not expand his land holdings or wealth. Such a union would be scandelous but it would at least be considered a scandelous legitimate marriage. Marriage between a serf and a baron would not even be considered legitimate by most people. 
> 
> A marriage was not necessarily a formal ceremony. Two people could consent to wed and be wed, wherever, whenever! This loophole would probably come in handy for fudging the date of marriage to pretend their child was concieved in wedlock. 
> 
> I have so enjoyed writing this story. It is a fun challenge to write characters who aren't always likeable or moral and do historical wordbuilding. If you enjoyed reading it, leave me a comment! It makes my day to interact with readers like you. 
> 
> Keep an eye out for my very first canon (well, post-canon) multi-chapter story!


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